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To: AndrewC
Have you discovered a way to "prove" axioms? :^)

I wish ;)

Anyway, some things have to be taken as axiomatic, even by experts, and some things that might be provable to experts are not accessible to the rest of us. I have some math in my background, but not nearly enough to evaluate the validity of Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's theorem. If the mathematicians tell me it's proven, I don't have much choice but to accept what they say - for all intents and purposes, the statement "Fermat's last theorem is correct" is taken as axiomatic to me, if not to mathematicians. I have neither the tools nor the training to do otherwise, although the process is open in the sense that we can at least imagine me coming to have that knowledge. And if British botanists tell me that this plant is something never before seen, and most likely a brand-new species, what choice do I have but to accept that, too?

Maybe it'll turn out that this conclusion is wrong - it's happened before, as with that thing on flatworm speciation or whatever it was that we were talking about a few months ago. But with a few exceptions, none of us here can really do anything but wait for something resembling consensus to arise - we aren't in a position to do much but take their word for it. We all (hopefully) understand the process of scientific investigation, at least, and accept that the process is likely to eventually produce a correct result, so now we wait for that to happen.

449 posted on 02/24/2003 1:02:24 PM PST by general_re (Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.)
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To: general_re
Axiomatic™ placemarker
452 posted on 02/24/2003 1:37:35 PM PST by longshadow
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To: general_re
And if British botanists tell me that this plant is something never before seen, and most likely a brand-new species, what choice do I have but to accept that, too?

Though some may have a problem with the presence of a new "species", for others it is the relevance of the new "species" to the question of a Darwinian type evolution. Part of the problem stems from the lack of a clear and consistent definition of "species".

For example in the bone department

       Researchers debated where in humankind’s family tree the new fossil belonged, eventually describing it as a new species called Homo rudolfensis. They drew a question mark in diagrams of human evolution, wondering how these two groups of humans interacted and which one gave rise to the peoples of today.
       Enter OH 65: Its upper jaw and teeth provide what Blumenschine called “a key anatomical link” between the lower jaw of H. habilis and the toothless H. rudolfensis cranium.
       In their new paper in Friday’s issue of Science, Blumenschine and 16 co-authors conclude that all of the specimens are similar enough to be called H. habilis, and H. rudolfensis is not a separate species at all. At the same time, they suggest that several smaller-brained specimens do not belong in H. habilis.

457 posted on 02/24/2003 2:19:25 PM PST by AndrewC
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