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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Absence of Thought
Message-ID: <1270@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Aug-85 11:34:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1270
Posted: Fri Aug 16 11:34:26 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 03:49:12 EDT
References: <967@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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In article <967@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP
   (Beth Christy) writes:

>Now this example is obviously unscientific, because there *is* an alter-
>native, scientific explanation that *not only* explains why everything up
>til now has fallen, *not only* predicts (with success) that things will
>continue to fall, it *also* explains a host of other neat things (like
>orbits and stuff).  (For those of you on the edge of your seats wondering
>what theory it is, I'm talking about gravity. :-)  But the point here is
>that the existence of an alternate, natural explanation has no impact on
>the actual quality of the supernatural explanation.  It only serves as
>something to compare the latter to.  The fact that alternate explanations
>*do* exist has no bearing on the validity of supernatural explanations,
>and the fact that they don't currently exist doesn't either.  After all,
>"whenever you let go of something, god makes it fall" wasn't any more
>scientific *before* Newton than it is now.  With or without natural
>explanations, supernatural explanations are just plain bad science.

So far, so good.

>"But," you may say, "at least until natural explanations come along,
>supernatural ones are better than nothing."  But think about that.  Are
>they really?  What do they buy us?  They may explain how things actually
>are.  But do they say anything at all about how things will be?  And do
>they lead us to new and useful discoveries about other things?  I believe
>(although (it should go without saying) I could be wrong) that genetics
>was spawned by an attempt to determine how individuals passed on their
>"relative advantages" according to the theory of natural selection.
>Certainly a host of archeological milestones are directly attributable to
>attempts to verify(/disprove) evolutionary theory.  And by acknowledging
>the genetic relatedness between humans and other creatures, drugs can be
>more effectively tested without risking human lives, and hence are just
>lots and lots safer when they do hit the market.  The list goes on.  Now
>creation theory has been around a heck of a lot longer than evolutionary
>theory.  In the long absence of the alternate, natural explanation, what
>scientific benefits did the supernatural one offer?  On what basis would
>you claim that "supernatural explanations are better than nothing"?  Or,
>if you say I've built a strawman and you *don't* claim that, on what
>basis would you claim that they're better than (or even "at least as good
>as") the natural ones that do exist?  And if you don't claim either, then
>what the h*ll are posting to net.origins for?

Things were going along just fine until we ran into genetics, which,
incidentally, is a very good example of the kind of erroneous argument
about science that some have put forth on the net.  Genetics, as most of
us know, originated when Gregor Mendel realized that there was a pattern
to the passing on of traits in the plants he was raising.  People were
already aware that traits were passed on to descendants, but they had no
theory of how or in what proportions.  Having stumbled onto a submissive
gene, Mendel realized that these traits were somehow quantized.  (This
predated Darwin by quite some time, by the way.)  People already had some
ideas about this process, but the ideas were improper theories, just as 
spontaneous generation was an improper theory (and not a miracle, as
Rich Rosen chooses to believe).

Evolution as a theory came about in the same way.  Darwin, upon observing
birds and other animals in the Galapagos, came to the realization that the
various species of finches (I think it was finches) were adapted to various
habitats, and moreover, that he could relate them in such a way that it
appeared that more specialized species derived from less specialized species.
Generalizing from this, it became apparent to him that this kind of relation
could be found almost anywhere, and, most importantly, that he could trace
lines of speciation back into the fossil records.  It is this kind of
recognition of a pattern and generalization that is characteristic of
valid scientific theories.

Creationists have attacked evolution on supposedly scientific grounds.
Whether or not their attacks have merit, I think that the end goal of
their attacks (which is to clear out a space in science into which they
can fit their religious doctrine) must be regarded with suspicion.

Others, I should note, are not above suspicion.  Currently in net.philosophy
there is an argument about free will.  Ignoring for the moment the problem
that no one seems to have a coherent definition, some people have been making
the assertion that "the world is almost entirely deterministic, so we must
conclude that the mind is too, since there is no evidence to the contrary."
This simply isn't valid science, because one can quite symmetrically argue
that "the world has some random processes, so we must conclude that the
mind is too, since there is no evidence to the contrary."  The whole point
is that there is no evidence.  It's all well and good to construct 
hypotheses like these, but, in the utter lack of any real evidence or
understanding of what happens in the human brain, they must remain hypotheses.
This is precisely why you can't have creationism taught as science; as a
hypothesis, it is impossible to prove (short of a revelation).  Evolution
has a lot of evidence to support it, but even if it is proven to be wrong,
the choice is between evolution and "we don't know".

Charley Wingate