Logic, Reason, Intellectual Honesty, and What is the makeup of a Scientific Theory?
I open this thread not as a flamewar over origins (we all pretty much know where we all stand on that matter) but rather to open up an avenue into a deeper discussion. What constitutes a Scientific Theory? It is not as simple as you may think.
Many have said in threads that discuss evolution / design that design is not scientific.
I agree to some extent. I also would submit evolution as well is not scientific.
But before I can say that we all must indeed know what is needed to be considered for qualification to be a scientific theory in the first place.
To know if either is scientific we must know what it is exactly to in fact be classified as a "Scientific Theory"
It may be that evolution and design both qualify or neither or just one.
Must a scientific theory be testable?
Must a scientific theory be exclusively naturalistic?
These and others are great questions...
Can it be many in the scientific community are actually unaware of what exactly a "Scientific Theory" is?
Why would I say such a thing you may ask? I ask because I believe many in the scientific realm have never really addressed the issue of what exactly constitues a Scientific Theory.
Before the knee jerk reactions begin just calm down and consider this notion. Could it actually be many in the scientific realm are not fully educated on what exactly is permited to be considered "scientific"?
Are there differences of opinion within the scientific community over what constitutes a scientific theory?
I believe these are great questions that light should be shed on.
I invite you to read the following and weigh in with your thoughts.
Thoughts over Scientific Theory
Thanks in advance for your critical review and response.
Fellowship
Many have said in threads that discuss evolution / design that design is not scientific.
I agree to some extent. I also would submit evolution as well is not scientific.
But before I can say that we all must indeed know what is needed to be considered for qualification to be a scientific theory in the first place.
To know if either is scientific we must know what it is exactly to in fact be classified as a "Scientific Theory"
It may be that evolution and design both qualify or neither or just one.
Must a scientific theory be testable?
Must a scientific theory be exclusively naturalistic?
These and others are great questions...
Can it be many in the scientific community are actually unaware of what exactly a "Scientific Theory" is?
Why would I say such a thing you may ask? I ask because I believe many in the scientific realm have never really addressed the issue of what exactly constitues a Scientific Theory.
Before the knee jerk reactions begin just calm down and consider this notion. Could it actually be many in the scientific realm are not fully educated on what exactly is permited to be considered "scientific"?
Are there differences of opinion within the scientific community over what constitutes a scientific theory?
I believe these are great questions that light should be shed on.
I invite you to read the following and weigh in with your thoughts.
Thoughts over Scientific Theory
Thanks in advance for your critical review and response.
Fellowship
Comments
BAH
All the mods have warned you before. You just can't start a thread with a couple of statements and "discuss". Where is the current issue this is associated with? What's YOUR opinion? Why do you always post with "discuss", wait for others to reply, then post your fixed opinion 25 times over?
Barto
1) It has to be communicable.
2) It has to be systematic (orderly, as in cause and effect, hierarchically structured, ...)
3) There are means to control its reliability.
Any theory that does not conform to one or more of the three above principles does not qualify as scientific.
I wanted to mention this, because this might be a better starting point than the link you provide. I understand your post as asking about scientific theory in general, and, once that question would be settled, asking about evolution again; though you start by saying:
origins (we all pretty much know where we all stand on that matter) but rather to open up an avenue into a deeper discussion
which makes the link you provide rather unfair: it presupposes the falsity of evolution, whereas that is not the point of your discussion (as I understand your first sentence).
I think you do science no honour if you state that scientists do not busy themselves with asking questions as to their activities and theories. I suggest you make YOURSELF clearer, or we might see this thread closed too soon.
EDIT: That first sentence
Fellowship, have you received higher education?
is not meant in any way to question your intelligence or be disrespectful, it is rather a question leading to the point I make shortly thereafter.
Following the most dirt-simple fact gathering tells us that "the house always wins" with a very painful financial reminder to drive that point home.
Just ask Bill Bennett.
There is nothing rational about gambling, the participants simply believe in "chance"---enough to ignore every piece of evidence to the contrary.
It is the same way for all who are not participating in the Truth.
Originally posted by ena
Without lambasting any one group, we can't separate ourselves from our basic beliefs, or "presuppositions", if you will. The problem with "science" and "knowledge" is that man DOES NOT learn by experience, he learns by FAITH (and I don't mean that in a "religious" sort of way---although man is a religious creature). If man learned by experience there would be no Atlantic City or Las Vegas, and there would be no lotteries in the the U.S.
I think the main flaw in this reasoning is that you don't expressly make the distinction between general human activity and scientific activity. It is so that one belongs to the other (scientific activity being inherently human), but it is not so that all of the other is the one (even more: most human activity is NOT scientific). There is no science of gambling (except possibly for the tactics 'the house' employs to always win).
I can only agree with you for so much. I'd rather your bold statement'd read, man DOES NOT learn EVERYTHING by experience. Many things, however, could only have reached their current status by man relying heavily on their shared experience (scientific experience, in many cases). As, for example, the automotive industry, the computing industry, the medical industry.
Originally posted by der Kopf
I think the main flaw in this reasoning is that you don't expressly make the distinction between general human activity and scientific activity. It is so that one belongs to the other (scientific activity being inherently human), but it is not so that all of the other is the one (even more: most human activity is NOT scientific). There is no science of gambling (except possibly for the tactics 'the house' employs to always win).
I can only agree with you for so much. I'd rather your bold statement'd read, man DOES NOT learn EVERYTHING by experience. Many things, however, could only have reached their current status by man relying heavily on their shared experience (scientific experience, in many cases). As, for example, the automotive industry, the computing industry, the medical industry.
I don't know.....I believe that it is impossible to separate man's basic mentality from his activity---what I think happens in manufacturing, and the others fields where you have to get things right or someone dies or an airplane falls out of the sky, is that we believe the universe is ordered as a starting point. We have to believe that, for instance, a material has a quality that will always be the same for making a car or airplane.
If you ask a "person of Faith" or "religious" person they will tell you that we can really only assume this because we have part of God's personality---and are able to relate to the universe correctly in a partial way---the same way that God himself deals with, or understands it, fully. This person would go on to say that this same characteristic is almost impossible to erase from a person--no matter what their beliefs are.
I think a Catholic would call it "common grace".
Without reviling the evolutionists out there, when you get down to it, they shouldn't believe in an ordered universe at all, it is something of a departure from a belief in ultimate chaos, to believe that we have a incomprehensible level of order and complexity in what we see.
There is something of a dichotomy there.
It is safe to assume that a property that has been observed to occur many times over will continue to occur. THis is deterministic science. This is where you find newtonian physics and einsteins general relativity.
There are many examples (the earliest and the most understood one is weather -- it was a modeling of weather that led Lorenz to discover choas) of non-deterministic properties, that is chaotic ones. But before we discuss chaos in scientific terms, you need to strip away your everyday understanding of the word. Chaotic systems can fall always within a range of events. Take for instance a magnetic pendulum oscillating between other magnets. That system cannot end up with the pendulum traveling off into outer space if all it was set up with was enough energy to oscillate in a given area. Chaos is thus unpredictable but always remains within the boundaries.
Niether of these views are contradictory to the other. The universe is composed of many chaotic entities and also many (although perhaps only on local scales) non-chaotic entities.
A scientific theory is simply a testable desciption of an event.
That is the accepted definition (perhaps not the words I used, but the idea).
Originally posted by Rick1138
What you are refering to is a strange attractor, a truly chaotic system is completely unpredictable, has no stucture whatsoever and is free to wander any where in a given state space. Only systems with positive Lyapunov exponent are capable of transfoming infinitesimal variations in a parameter into macroscopic changes, over a period of time (the "butterfly effect"), and are therefore the only ones that are radically unpredictable.
There is still the fact that a system has a given energy etc (as you mention it the state space)... When most people think chaos, they think events that fall outside of models, and without complicating things too much physical chaotic systems can be modeled....
Originally posted by ena
Yes, but to start from the premise of---ultimate Chaos first then highly ordered systems later---is a departure from what is observed. Like the gambler, you see that the house always wins but still continue in the belief in chance or chaos will produce results---just as in the popular scientific definition we test highly ordered systems and then insist they were generated by chaos at large.
Actually ena, randomness,entropy etc increase with time. That is acutally one of the definitions of forward time. The early universe was the most ordered, and the terminal universe is the one with maximized entropy -- the point at which all energy is disipated into unusable form.
Originally posted by Rick1138
What you are refering to is a strange attractor, a truly chaotic system is completely unpredictable, has no stucture whatsoever and is free to wander any where in a given state space. Only systems with positive Lyapunov exponent are capable of transfoming infinitesimal variations in a parameter into macroscopic changes, over a period of time (the "butterfly effect"), and are therefore the only ones that are radically unpredictable.
There is still the fact that a system has a given energy etc... When most people think chaos, they think events that fall outside of models, and without complicating things too much physical chaotic systems can be modeled, as you probably know...
Originally posted by BR
Another great unbiased source. Now let's go learn the history of the civil rights movement from TIMEFORALYNCHIN.com.
BAH
a little bio of the author I linked to:
Stephen C. Meyer received his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge in 1991 for a dissertation on origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. Formerly a geophysicist with the Atlantic Richfield Company, he is currently Director of the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture at Discovery Institute and an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth College. He is a past recipient of a Rotary International Scholarship, the American Friends of Cambridge scholarship (administered by the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust) and a Templeton Foundation science-religion teaching grant. He has contributed articles to several scholarly books and anthologies including The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition: An Encyclopedia, Darwinism: Science or Philosophy, Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins, The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for An Intelligent Designer and Facets of Faith and Science: Interpreting God's Action in the World. In addition to technical articles on the philosophy of science, he has published many editorial features in newspapers and magazines such as The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and National Review. He has also recently appeared as a guest on several national television programs including PBS's Freedom Speaks and TechnoPolitics, and CNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews. He is currently working on a book formulating a scientific theory of biological design, which looks specifically at the evidence for design in the encoded information in DNA.
Sorry you don't agree with the man you must be biased....
BR wake up and smell the coffee we are all biased.
I want truth not bias that is the point behind the link.
If one would read what Dr. Meyer wrote they may actually have to address some issues of intellectual honesty.
Fellowship
Originally posted by Barto
I smell another round of FCiB thread locks...
All the mods have warned you before. You just can't start a thread with a couple of statements and "discuss". Where is the current issue this is associated with? What's YOUR opinion? Why do you always post with "discuss", wait for others to reply, then post your fixed opinion 25 times over?
Barto
Barto thanks for the kind words. I expected as much from some.
You ask "what's YOUR opinion?" My opinion is that both the concepts of evolution as well as design qualify as scientific theory to the degree that science allows other theories to "be" with less testable data.
Read the link I provided for further detail.
Fellowship
Originally posted by FellowshipChurch iBook
He is currently working on a book formulating a scientific theory of biological design, which looks specifically at the evidence for design in the encoded information in DNA.
Thats the kicker... Who presents "scientific theory" in a book? Has he done any science?
Fellowship, you dont look for information outside of your own view. Find a link that contridicts what you think and put it with the link you like. Then, then you will have set up a debate.
what does that mean? a datum is a datum is a datum. Do you mean testable aspect of certain theories?
Originally posted by billybobsky
Thats the kicker... Who presents "scientific theory" in a book? Has he done any science?
Fellowship, you dont look for information outside of your own view. Find a link that contridicts what you think and put it with the link you like. Then, then you will have set up a debate.
I am not looking to set up any debate at all.....
Not one little bit in fact. I am asking the group if they are able to read what I linked to and then come back to me and tell me if the concept of evolution and the concept of design can both one or the other or neither be considered a "scientific theory" and I welcome why each of you all come to your judgements.
For the record after reading the material I find that both evolution and design qualify to both be considered "scientific theories" as science has afforded other theories the same merits in previous cases that now for what ever reason some in science want to deny to design being considered a theory.
I don't ask for a debate I ask the group to read what I linked to and respond with intellectual honesty.
Fellowship
Originally posted by billybobsky
"less testable data."
what does that mean? a datum is a datum is a datum. Do you mean testable aspect of certain theories?
Such a clear understanding would be understood if you bothered to read the link. It makes it painfully clear what I mean when I say less testable data.
Fellowship
Go ahead give it a read.
One of the scientists used here to miscredit evolution theory (a mr Wickramasinghe or somehting like that) on the basis of small chance something like that had developed here. He had a "more likely" theory that life had developed without the intervention of any god-person in outher space (this little fact was overlooked by those defending his theory) and later came to the earth on a comet or similar.
Guess what he said yesterday. SARS came to us from outher space too.
Whats next? Boybands?
The purpose of this thread is to test to see if the members who choose to participate within the discussion of this thread can read the doc I linked to number one. Number two it is to see if they can track without distraction to an end. The end being with all due intellectual honesty do they see any reason that the concept of evolution and the concept of design have any particular different factors from the other that would differentiate one from the other as far as it is concerned pertaining to being indeed a scientific theory. The broader question is what constitutes a "scientific theory" Seems many people have their own ideas and it all depends on what the subject is concerning mixed with a little bit of bias.
That is my point with this thread.
An intellectually honest person I would submit can treat matters equally and fairly.
I ask the members here to be the jury of what my linked to doc mentions pertaining to the matter.
Fellowship