The Politburo Diktat

Diversity is the answer. How did such a diverse ecosystem evolve from a single source. Perplexing.

What drove the diversity and why isn't there just one highly evolved form of life on earth?

Questions and no answers.

As to your original premise -- It is possible that there are two mechanism at work and both are correct. Just a few days ago we didn't know about the plant gene correcting for failure. The more we know the more we understand we know little.

Conservative, 2 time Bush voter, but just an engineer who knows there is a lot we don't know or understand. Maybe someday.

Not a good idea to accept a theory as fact (a) if it frequently fails to explain things well and (b) because no one has yet come up with a better theory. Anyway, even if you accept the idea that there was a Higher Power involved in the creation (which I'm willing to give some credence to), it doesn't mean that that Higher Power ever bothered to leave any messages for us. (Or that it was the one that we happen to believe.)

I'm just glad you're beginning to post more frequently again.

It's good to see, Commissar.

I'm not Paul, and I'm not a scientist, but what the hell, I've got an opinion anyway. Surprise.

The theory of evolution basically comes in two parts. First is the part that says that species change over time due to things like environmental pressures and just plain ol' random mutations. Nobody can argue that this isn't true. My ex-girlfriend was born without wisdom-tooth buds. Pure mutation. Will it be passed down to her kids? Don't know. But that's just an example. The fact that organisms change over generations is undeniably true.

The other part of the theory says that organisms change into significantly different organisms over time. Fish evolve into lizards, dinosaurs evolve into birds, shrews evolve into you and me. That's the part that's never been observed. There appears to be a sort of succession of life in the fossil record, but it's got massive gaps in it that we have yet to explain. One explanation might be that evolution in punctuated. Another explanation is that it basically doesn't happen at all, at least not in the way that's been theorized.

The first half of the theory is pretty much indisputable, I think. The second half … who knows? There are just too many gaps in our knowledge to come anywhere close to thinking that we can explain the diversity of life.

An important part of the scientific method is recognizing the limits of what we know. When somebody recognizes the limits of what we know about the history of life, it doesn't necessarily mean he's a creationist, or an anti-evolutionist, or any type of "ist" at all. Except possibly "scientist."

Crud. In my pontificating, I forgot to answer the questions.

1. I don't have any reason to believe that dinosaur fossils, in general, aren't the ancient remains of creatures now extinct. There might be, and have been, cases of fraud or error, but I think the generalization is fine.

2. I haven't the foggiest idea. I think the random-change hypothesis is reasonable, but not as well supported by the facts as it would need to be in order for me to even call it a theory, much less truth. And I think the God-did-it hypothesis has the benefit of explaining everything perfectly, but requires the acceptance of an unprovable axiom. That's nothing new. Geometry has several unprovable axioms.

Thanks for bringing this up Commissar. Wizbang is getting less and less worth reading because of this topic...

Honestly, I don't have much that's worth my time to add except to say that the whole debate underlines what I've thought for a long time - people don't understand what science is. I find it particularly interesting that people explain away the idea of a theory by saying "there's so much we can't explain," displaying a serious failure to grasp that theories are, to put it crudely, fairly accurate and economical explanations for a natural process. Seems a lot like me to the multiple outs relied on by moral relativists on the left.

I have a hard time understanding why people aren't more open to evolution by natural selection as an explanation for a diversity of forms. After all, we can, with a fair degree of reliability, pinpoint when certain human populations branched off from each other through markers on the Y chromosome. Match that up with climate history and we can pretty much tell when and for how long populations were isolated. In geologic time, populations were never isolated very long, yet plenty of noticeable, superficial changes took place in accordance to the demands of particular environments. Sure, it's not speciation, not even close, but it doesn't strike me as at all nuts to extrapolate that long-term isolation of populations and environmental pressures are more than sufficient to produce the diversity of species on earth. Unless one's a short-earther...

Nathan, I have a serious problem with something you said. You said, first, "People don't understand what science is." This is undeniably true in some cases. However, you then went on to say, "We can, with a fair degree of reliability, pinpoint when certain human populations branched off from each other through markers on the Y chromosome."

That's absolute horse manure, and you know it. We have theories about when certain populations branched off from each other by extrapolating what we think we know about how DNA works. These theories appear to fit what facts and observations we have. But they are inherently untestable.

If you want to talk about knowing science, you have to start by talking about the difference between a testable and an untestable hypothesis. There is absolutely no way for us to test the hypothesis that X group branched from Y group so-n-so thousand years ago. It can't be done. That's not a hypothesis. It's a guess.

There's nothing wrong with guessing. But it's not science. Because guesses aren't testable.

Formulate a hypothesis, use it to make a prediction, then see how well the observations fit the prediction. That's how science is done. The problem is that so much of the pseudo-science that revolves around the origins of life has nothing to do with the scientific method at all. They're just flat-out guesses made by people with letters after their names.

See the problem?

I don't understand. Does Paul attack evolution as an explaination for biodiversity?

Every time the Creation vs Evolution argument gets going I shudder. Are these not totally different questions ?

Things change. A LOT. That does nothing for me to answer the question, "How did we get here?"

The world was formed in 7 days, as is.
DNA mutation and natural selection explain the origins of life. Both of these statements sound nutty to me.

Evolution posits that random chance over a sufficiently long period of time produced the present state of diversity that we see. It is fundamentally an assertion grounded in statistics. But so far as I can see, no proponent of the theory offers a statistical analysis that demonstrates the probability of the random changes on which the theory relies. It seems to me that the proponents of a theory founded on an assertion about statistics must provide the statistical calculations that demonstrate the probabilities before they may properly call the theory a scientific theory. Moreover, many who have done the math (Prof. Sir Fred Hoyle, founder of the Univ. of Cambridge Institute of Theoretical Astronomy being one of them) end up concluding that the probabilities are so infinitesimal that chance cannot be the correct explanation. Therefore it seems to me to be logical and, indeed, scientific, to withhold agreement that the theory is proven, and instead to recognize that it may well be fundamentally wrong. In the 1984 Presidential campaign Walter Mondale famously challenged Reagan's proposals by evoking a then-popular catch phrase for a fast-food burger chain: "Where's the beef?" In response to random evolution proponents I ask: "Where's the math?"

Okay, I'm a republican, two-time bush voter, and my dad has a masters in paleontology (KU) and a PhD in geology (columbia) (a republican and two-time bush voter too), and I just don't see how anyone could *believe* that there isn't empirical proof of evolution everywhere we look. When I say believe, I mean in the way I believe in god, and that I believe god created the universe. You can *believe* in creationism, like so many christians, and still *know* that evolution is real, like so many scientists. There *are* a lot of christian scientists out there, who don't have a major problem with this.

And the whole idea that people need to *prove* scientifically that creationism is scientifically viable, like this new creationism they're trying to get taught in schools, just tells me that they're very uneasy in their beliefs. Otherwise they wouldn't need to defend them so fiercely by attacking science and moulding it to suit their own purposes.

And as for the school thing, if the parents don't want their kids learning evolution, that's fine. But they should try devoting themselves to school vouchers with the same enthusiasm as this creationism business, and quit trying to water down science in the public schools, where education is weak enough already.

Hi Jeff.

Nice to see you blogging more often, Commissar. We've missed the equality and fraternity of your particular brand of oppression.

Jeff Harmon says:

That's absolute horse manure, and you know it. We have theories about when certain populations branched off from each other by extrapolating what we think we know about how DNA works. These theories appear to fit what facts and observations we have. But they are inherently untestable.

and

There is absolutely no way for us to test the hypothesis that X group branched from Y group so-n-so thousand years ago. It can't be done. That's not a hypothesis. It's a guess.

Sorry, Jeff. But you are wrong on a number of counts here.

Firstly, the "branching" between species is characterized by fossil records, which can be accurately dated using a number of independent methods (geological strata, carbon dating, magnetic fluctuations, isotopic dating from cosmic radiation damage, geophysical activity are among them). So a branching not a hypothesis, nor a guess, it's an experimental observation based upon a number of converging lines of evidence. This merging of multiple clues from disparate disciplines is science in its purest form.

Secondly, primary and mitochondrial DNA provide a means of testing the relationship and inheritance between species, and provide a method for confirming the relationship between the ancestor species and associated descendent species. It is an extraordinarily important new tool, but not the only tool, available to paleontologists for testing relationships between species, and their conclusions about the timeframe when diversification of species occurred.

Also, keep in mind that when the first method for determining the branching point of two species is identified (usually by a series of readily characterizable differences between the species), that this branch point is now open to testing by observations from all the other tools available to paleontologists. Again it is the convergence to an answer by tests from a number of disciplines which leads credence to a particular conclusion regarding species diversification. Believe me, these guys are as skeptical of each other as you are of them. In deed, science lives by being skeptical of itself. (I cannot say the same about certain brands of Christianity.)

I know it probably is irksome to be "talked down to" about "not understanding science". However, if you want to step on a soap box and expound on the problems associated with the theory of the origin of species, please make the effort to understand first how the science was arrived at.

If you want to intelligently criticize the science, you will need to make the personal effort to understand it well enough to know how it arrives at the conclusions it does. Science is a dynamic process in which assumptions get continuously reexamined, and conclusions are continuously revised based upon new evidence.

On the other hand, if you want to say that you don't believe the science because it is at odds to your faith, why not just do so?

The Commisar says:

What do YOU believe, Paul?

Given a logic choice between two alternatives, it appears that Paul believes in neither, which is the NULL set.

Commisar, why do you have so much trouble wrapping your brain that? Paul after all, learned all he knows about science from high school. There is a message there... somewhere. Maybe about the need to improve our science curriculum?

Believe is a tricky word. It can mean holding an opinion based on balance of evidence: a best guess, sufficiently good to go with, unless and until something seriously relevant and contradictory comes up. But those with Faith use it differently; they mean an all-or-nothing commitment to a particular idea or verbal formulation, which rests on something more akin to a personal decision which chrystalizes a range of attitudes towards life and existence than any assertion about evidence. One theologian always endeavored to "believe 11 impossible things before breakfast" to keep his faith toned up.

It would be instructive to many non-scientists to see how unholy happy many physicists get if someone seems to have produced evidence that challenges their greatest achievement, the Standard Theory. Something new! Something with greater power to explain! Even if they "believe" the Standard Theory, they encourage and participate in vigorous and ingenious efforts to disprove it. Eventually, they know, they may run out of neat new tests to try and have to give up in discouragement and leave it to a new generation, but they dread the day.

Such an approach is literally anathema among those who demand faith and certainty as a prerequisite for membership in their groups. I'm sure we can all think of plenty of poignant examples in the news and our own pasts, not to mention history. Why, some heretics were even crucified!

I invented diversity.

Carrick,

The best part was when he said to me "You must have a hard time with logic puzzles."

Carrick, it's "Harrell." I could care less what you say about me as long as you spell my name right.

Off the top, you say that fossils can be "accurately dated using a number of independent methods." How do you know that the results of these independent methods are, in fact, accurate? That proposition is impossible to test. I think you mean to say that they can be precisely dated, which is an entirely different thing.

Beyond that, all we have is a bunch of fossils. We can make guesses about the relationships between them. These guesses might be completely crazy or they might be highly rational and elaborate, but they're still just guesses. They're inherently untestable, so we can never know if they're right or not.

Then you say, "primary and mitochondrial DNA provide a means of testing the relationship and inheritance between species." That's not correct. When you compare mitochondrial DNA, you're … comparing mitochondrial DNA. The results of the tests, combined with what we think we know, can imply certain things. But that sort of highly removed testing-by-implication can't prove anything. Once again, you go farther along the path than the science supports.

My favorite part, though, was this: "On the other hand, if you want to say that you don't believe the science because it is at odds to your faith, why not just do so?" I have written many times, at great length, over the past five years about the fact that I have no faith. This has nothing to do with faith. It has to do with recognizing the limits of what we think we know.

Consider, by way of analogy, gravity. We can make observations: An apple, when dropped, falls. We can make detailed observations: An apple, when dropped, falls at such-and-such an acceleration under such-and-such conditions. We then develop a hypothesis to explain why.

How do we test that hypothesis? By using it to make predictions. "If I drop an apple from such-and-such height, it should hit the ground in such-and-such time, disregarding experimental error." Then we measure. If the results match the predictions, the hypothesis is supported.

But then along came an annoying anomaly: The planet Mercury didn't move in exactly the way we thought it should based on our hypothesis. Clearly our hypothesis was wrong. Some smart people then concocted an absurdly complex hypothesis to replace the simpler one. On a small scale, the absurdly complex hypothesis leads to the same predictions as the simple one, which is why we keep the simple one around and teach it to high-school students. But on a large scale, the complex hypothesis leads to predictions which better fit our observations.

But through all that … do we understand gravity? No. We have reasonably good mathematical models which tell us how things move under the influence of gravity, more or less, as long as the problems don't get too complex, but we have no understanding whatsoever of the actual mechanism of gravity. We have a whole set of guesses that date back to the mid-20th century, but the closer we look at the interior of the atom, the closer we are to throwing those guesses out as simplistic fantasies. We don't have any particular reason to believe that we're any closer to the truth than we were three hundred years ago.

See the analogy? We have some hypotheses about how organisms change over time. Those hypotheses lead us to make predictions — like "birds from this island can't breed with birds from that island" — and sometimes those hypotheses prove to be true. But sometimes those hypotheses — "the fossil record should include a complete succession of small changes showing the continuity of life" — prove to be false, or at least not-yet-true. Is the hypothesis sound? Well, at this point, not really. It looks pretty good, in most respects, but there's a Mercury spinning around out there that we can't explain. Namely, the hypothesis can't explain the startling gaps in the fossil record, what we all used to call the "missing links" in the chain.

You want examples? What's the relationship between prokaryotes and eukaryotes? Did they have separate origins, or did one evolve from the other? There's no evidence one way or the other right now. It's a complete mystery. And none of our ideas about how evolution works from generation to generation can explain how either group could have evolved from the other.

Point is, we don't know nearly as much as you make it sound like you think we know. We have guesses, and guesses are almost always wrong in small or large part. Just based on oddsmaking alone, the safe bet is that our present guesses about the diversity of life are going to turn out to be at least incomplete, and maybe even totally wrong.

Jeff,

Your Mercury example is a good one. The more complex theory was a development, an advancement, a refinement of Newton's basic idea. Good. That's progress. So far, we all agree. Even with the notion, that to some extent, the 'theory of gravity was flawed.'

But permit me to introduce my cousin to you. My cousin "Pete" rejects gravity. Nope. It doesnt happen that way. Every time I trip, and angel grabs me and throws me to the ground. Every time an apple separates from the tree limb, Pete tells us that an angel carries that apple to the ground. And yes, one of Pete's angels tweaked Mercury's orbit. Pete hollers any chance he gets, "GRAVITY IS FLAWED." He also insists on 'equal time' for his 'angelic theory of gravity.'

How about it, Jeff? Do we give "Pete" equal time? Do we caveat every single mention of 'gravitational theory' with Pete's suspicions?

In some ways it's a matter of context and of emphasis. CONTEXT: Is there a Pete clouding facts with bullshit? EMPHASIS: Do we care about the distinction between "major holes," and "filling in the gaps within an established framework?"

Absent Pete, no one worries about how to phrase or emphasize the limits of our knowledge, and ongoing progress in the field of gravitational theory.

In the case of evolution,in the context of people with a religious agenda deliberately trying to cloud the issue, and make it seem like their are major problems where none exist, then the emphasis becomes important.

"In the case of evolution,in the context of people with a religious agenda deliberately trying to cloud the issue, and make it seem like their are major problems where none exist, then the emphasis becomes important."

Yes.

Now you're in the realm of belief systems, which are not subject to provability. If you can't make a repeatable experiment in it, you can't reach a valid conclusion. Like say, String Theory, which if I understand correctly, is not testable.
On another note, have you been following the Pioneer Anomaly? Seems the Pioneer 10 & 11 probes have been slowing slightly in deep space. This leads to several alternative explanations:
(1) The theory of Gravity is off just a smigen
(2) Dark matter/energy has just become measurable
(3) Ed's theory of Gravity [The Earth Sucks]

Commissar, can you contradict Pete's angel theory? The test of a theory isn't whether you, personally, like it or not. The test is whether it can be contradicted. Does Pete's theory make predictions that don't match our observations? If not, then why the hell shouldn't it get equal time?

For all I know, you may have an excellent answer to that question. If you don't, let me supply you with mine: One of the guiding principles of science is that we can learn things by starting with only observations. Pretend you're a blank slate; observe the world around you. Make generalizations from only your observations of the world around you. Test those generalizations. That's science.

Pete's theory depends on assumptions that we can't observe or test, so given the choice between Pete's theory and Einstein's theory, Einstein's is preferred by scientists. That's not to say that Pete is wrong or that Einstein is right. It's just that Einstein's theory is more compatible with the scientific method.

Now, here's a real nut-scratcher for you: Is the scientific method the only way in which we can learn things? Here's another: Can the scientific method reveal all knowledge about the universe? In other words, can we learn everything there is to learn by following the scientific method?

To state it in yet another way, do other approaches to understanding the world have any value, or do you think they should all be discarded in favor of the scientific method?

(I understand that you really want to make this about religion. I'm not interested in talking about that, though, because I neither subscribe to nor abhor any religion. Religion doesn't even factor into it for me.)

"1) Do other approaches to understanding the world have any value, or 2) do you think they should all be discarded in favor of the scientific method?"

That's a loaded question, 1) No. 2) Yes.

There are some unknowables - Is there a God? What happened before the Big Bang? Sure, go ahead and use other approaches for that stuff.

But within its own (very large) sphere of applicability, I'll take the scientific method.

I think you meant yes and yes, didn't you?

1) Do other approaches to understanding the world have any value? "No."

2) do you think they should all be discarded in favor of the scientific method?" "Yes."

If you insist, I'll change my first answer to "Not much," or "Only in the realm of imponderables."

I was confused. From your comment, it sounded like you were saying that methods other than the scientific did, in fact, have value.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Maybe I'm just looking at the world in a broader sense. The scientific method is not helpful for telling me how to construct a persuasive opinion piece, or helping me decide what I think about matters of public policy, or for figuring out which guy to vote for. It seems to me that there are huge swaths of human experience that the scientific method just isn't good at explaining.

Science is great. Science is wonderful. Science is not, however, the be-all-end-all of human knowledge. It's just one way among many of learning about the world.

Jeff,

I stand corrected. Obviously in the realms of art, politics, ethics, etc., the scientific method is not the be-all-end-all.

But in biology, it is.

Come on, Commissar. You know that's not true. The scientific method is useful only for helping us develop hypotheses that make testable predictions. When it comes to explaining something that happened yesterday, the scientific method is no help.

"Organisms evolve" is a hypothesis that can be tested via the scientific method. "Organisms evolved in the past" isn't.

The best book I've seen on this subject is The Science of God, by Gerald Schroeder. A man of science and faith, Schroeder clearly lays out the case that science and religion need not diverge in their explanation of the origin of the universe and life on earth. Well worth reading, whichever side of the debate you're on. (I'm going to copy this in the comments of a few other blogs -- no spam intended, I'm just a big fan of this very relevant book.)

Jeff,

Does that mean the past is an intellectual void? To pick a minimally controversial case - The American War. That happened; it is a fact.

Do you/we KNOW that? Perhaps we KNOW by some means other than the scientific method. Perhaps you hold that the Am. Civil War is merely an agreed-upon cultural construct, whose value & lessons are as "good" as the Mona Lisa, but that we can't prove realy happened?

I'm a little too simplistic for such devices. If you agree that we KNOW the American Civil War happened by method or process X, or by rigorous obective discipline Y, fine. Then substitute that for 'scientific method.'

At any rate, please let me know - Is the Am. Civil War a fact or not?

BTW, the precise number of casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee's failure to follow Longstreet's advice there, and the actual impact of J.L. Chamberlain's 20th Maine at Little Round Top are still being debated by experts. "MAJOR HOLES IN THEORY OF THE CIVIL WAR????"

Jeff: Very sorry about misspellling your name.

Wish I had time to debate with you, but I don't.
Let me pick up one one point, then I have to run off and work:

How do you know that the results of these independent methods are, in fact, accurate?

Excellent question. Let me give you an analogy: If I want to know how old a tree is I count its rings. Since there is one ring per each year, then as long as I can accurately count the number of rings, then I know the age to within one year.

Now suppose I had several ways of dating the age of the tree. If there were potential systematic errors between each way of dating the trees, but the estimates of the age from each method gave the same age within their error bars, then scientifically, we would conclude that we had accurately established the age of the tree.

The point is that different measurement methods have their own systematic errors. By combining measurements from different disciplines (with their own unique systematic errors), we can eliminate the systematic bias from any one type of measurement. Accuracy implies the absence of systematic bias, which can be routinely obtained in science if there are enough different, non-overlapping methods for obtaining the quantity.

This interpretation of accuracy is one that any scientist engaged in accurate measurements would agree with. If we couldn't ever measure anything accurately, there would be no point to measurement.

The same type of argument I used wrt trees also applies to geological dating. I would recommend this book for details of how dating is done. It lists over 30 different methods for geological dating, but there are actually many more.

Hope you found this useful.

Commissar, I think you're kind of spinning off into space here. What does history have to do with the scientific method? The scientific method is about making and testing predictions, the exact opposite of history. One thing's not nothing to do with the other.

Carrick, you proved the point perfectly, but not in the way you think. How do we know that the age of a tree can be measured by counting rings? Because somebody planted a tree, waited 20 years, cut it down and counted 20 rings. The hypothesis was tested scientifically. Use the hypothesis to make a prediction — "a 20-year-old tree will have 20 rings" — then test that prediction and see if the facts match what you expected.

You can't do that with a fossil. I mean, I guess you could bury the body of a cow, wait a million years and dig it up again, but that's an experiment nobody's yet carried out. Methods for determining the age of very old things do not result in known truth. They result in guesses. We may suspect them of being very good guesses, but they're still just guesses because they can't be tested.

Besides that, you continue to confuse the terms "accurate" and "precise." When you take a measurement and it's close to a known true value, that measurement is accurate. When you take several measurements and they're all close to each other, they're precise.

If you measured the age of a tree in half a dozen different ways and they all pointed to the same result, you could say that your measurements are precise, but unless you know the actual age of the tree, you can't say whether they're accurate or not.

If you want to talk about knowing science, you have to start by talking about the difference between a testable and an untestable hypothesis. There is absolutely no way for us to test the hypothesis that X group branched from Y group so-n-so thousand years ago. It can't be done. That's not a hypothesis. It's a guess.

Except that we do have a pretty good handle on the random mutation rate on the Y chromosome in humans, so it's not a guess, it's a fairly reliable way to tell. Sure there's ranges and it's not precise, but it's not a guess and it can be done. It is being done.

Calling indirect, non-observational methods of measurement "guesses" is playing pretty fast and loose with the English language Jeff. The way that I, and I would imagine the rest of us, use that word is to mean a total shot in the dark not based on any particular set of data. If we know rates of radioactive decay, mutation rates, etc. what we have is more than a guess. And to extrapolate from that isn't just making things up. There's some instrumentality to science and denying all knowability - or even some knowability - of the past is to deny that.

Your tree explanation necessitates such a baroque, convoluted language for talking about the past (reminds me of Robert Anton Wilson and his argument that there should be no verb "to be" because, you know, nothing is something else) that it's almost meaningless to try to explain anything. Because, you know, even if you watched that tree grow for 100 years, how do you really know that 100 years passed? Even if you had a watch to measure time, how do you really know it's accurate.

Sure, there's never going to be philosophical certainty in the discussion of biological origins, but that's no reason to smash all grounds for discussion of it in a meaningful way.

Nathan, you wildly misrepresent me. What I'm saying is very simple: We don't know anything about the origin of life, or how all living organisms descended from a single common ancestor. We have hypotheses, which is fine, but we also have just flat-out wild-ass guesses, which is not fine.

"Complex organic molecules can form spontaneously" is a hypothesis; it can be tested. (So far, these tests have refuted rather than supported the hypothesis, but the game isn't over yet.)

"Birds evolved from dinosaurs" is not a hypothesis. It's not a proposition that can be tested. It's just a wild-ass guess. It might be a wild-ass guess that fits the facts as we understand them and explains the evidence we have, but it's still just a wild-ass guess. Calling it a "theory" makes a mockery of the scientific method.

See the difference? Testing hypotheses by making predictions and conducting experiments: science. Imagining stories of varying plausibility in order to explain something that no one has ever observed: not science.

"Imagining stories of varying plausibility in order to explain something that no one has ever observed: not science."

Why use the loaded words, Jeff? That's very Paul-like. I will re-phrase ...

"Developing explanations of varying plausibity [and constantly changing and refining them as new evidence emerges] to explain something that no one has ever observed ..." That absolutely is science.

Jeff says:

How do we know that the age of a tree can be measured by counting rings? Because somebody planted a tree, waited 20 years, cut it down and counted 20 rings. The hypothesis was tested scientifically. Use the hypothesis to make a prediction — "a 20-year-old tree will have 20 rings" — then test that prediction and see if the facts match what you expected.

I think we have made some progress. You appear to agree that we can make an hypothesis, namely the number of rings in a tree gives the age of a tree. We can then test this hypothesis using, in your example, a 20-year old tree, though we needn't cut down the tree, we would usually take a core sample instead.

After enough replications of this test, we infer that the ring-counting method is a scientifically valid means of establishing the age of a tree. We can then go out and count say 400 rings on another tree and establish its age as 400 years, without having to first sit and watch the tree for four hundred years.

In a class room, I would get you to agree verbally to this before I continued with my line of argument. This is because what we have hopefully agreed on has some pretty profound implications. And it literally turns out to just be the tip of the iceberg.

Using exactly the line of argument which you have outlined, it has been established that individual layers in core-samples from the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets correspond to one year each. Based on this form of "counting rings", some ice sheets go back at least 750,000 years.

Ice is notorious for absorbing gases. For example, if you put something in the fridge, and leave it too long, so that it becomes malodorous, you will note that the ice in your freezer has acquired the same scent. Thus, when global catastrophic events like eruptions occur, we find a signature in that layer of the ice. The signature is the same mix of isotopes as that found at a prehistoric volcanic eruption site. This then allows us to date the time of the eruption, because isotopic signatures from individual volcanos are pretty unique.

Next, we look under the lava of the volcano and find out what species existed at the time of the eruption (i.e., by finding fossil remnants of animals trapped in the ash from the eruption). If you have followed my chain of logic, you should admit that we know the age of this fossil.

Now let's skip back to the lab. Radio-isotopic decay, including the nuclear spectroscopy part, is a pretty easy thing to measure. In fact, I did some of this for an undergraduate course in nuclear physics. In any case, we can measure the half-life of carbon-14 extremely accurately, we can verify that it decays exponentially, etc, and everything else required by your "concrete level of proof".

Carbon-14 is created in the upper atmosphere via the absorption of a neutron by a nitrogen atom, creating a carbon-14 atom plus a proton. (You can also perform this experiment in the lab, if you have a good neutron source.) Turbulence in the atmosphere then circulates the 14C (now in the form of 14C-O2) into the lower atmosphere, where it gets absorbed into plants and animals via a number of different methods.

We know factually that the percentage of 14C found in a living organism is equal to the amount of 14C in the atmosphere, and that the amount found in inorganic matter is extremely small. Since we know the rate of decay, if we measure the amount of 14C in a fossil, we can carbon date the fossil. These days an accelerator is generally used, because we can determine the amount of 14C in the fossil much more accurately than we could using older methods.

Here is the kicker: Remember the fossil that we found previously under a lava flow which we dated by counting layers of ice in a Greenland ice cap? We can now carbon-date this fossil, to verify the carbon-dating method. So now we have radiocarbon dating as a proven alternative to "directly counting rings", we can use this method along with other radio-isotopic methods.

Just like with your illustration of the 20-year old tree, we do enough carbon dating where we know the age of the fossil (in this case, the volcano performed the coup-de-grace for us), and we can start assigning an estimate of the accuracy of the radiocarbon dating method.

If you have some patience and an open mind, you will find that there are a plethora of techniques for geological dating, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Again, I would recommend at least reading up on geological dating methods. The book I referenced is designed for the lay person. Likely it is available in a public library.

Jeff asserts:

See the difference? Testing hypotheses by making predictions and conducting experiments: science. Imagining stories of varying plausibility in order to explain something that no one has ever observed: not science.

Again you are wrong Jeff. You have just described "experimental science". There is another branch of empiricism known as "observational science", in which geological science together with astronomy falls into. There is testing done with observational science just as with experimental science.

Anyway, you keep using this word "untestable." Perhaps that word doesn't mean what you think it means?

Jeff says:

Besides that, you continue to confuse the terms "accurate" and "precise." When you take a measurement and it's close to a known true value, that measurement is accurate. When you take several measurements and they're all close to each other, they're precise.

Got a chance to pop back to this thread: Sorry, Jeff. I know the difference between accuracy and precision, and I am using the terms correctly. Accuracy is how close a measurement is to the true value of the physical quantity being measured. Precision is how repeatable a measurement is. Basically this agrees with your definitions.

Repeating a measurement allows you to reduce the measurement error, thereby increasing the precision, but not necessarily the accuracy... due to underlying systematic biases in the measurement process.

Anyway, what you are missing is that I am not talking about the repeatability of a measurement, but rather the use of different methods of making the same measurement (i.e., the age of a fossil) to put limits on the size of the (usually uncharacterized) systematic errors associated with each method of measurement.

The key point is that the systematic biases of different methods are unrelated. (As an example, consider radiocarbon dating versus counting layers in an icecap.) Thus, if you find enough different ways to obtain the same result, then you basically know that you have an accurate measurement of the underlying quantity.

The schema I described here is particularly important for observational sciences, such as astronomy (think about different methods of determining the distance to an astronomical object) or paleontology as in the example of determining the age of a fossil.

Commissar, I have to admit that I'm starting to lose interest here. We seem to be going around and around.

Let me leave my last word on this subject as succinctly as I know how: Science is the practice of creating hypotheses and then testing them. A hypothesis that goes untested — or that is inherently untestable — isn't science. It's speculation.

Thanks for the conversation. I'm disappointed that we couldn't have ended up closer to a point of agreement.

Jeff,

Even before this comment of yours, I realized that I owe it to myself (and anyone who wants to read) the relationship between the scientific method (per your specific definition of it), science, and 'objective fact.'

So I thank you for provoking me to clarify my own thinking. If/when I post such a thing, it will not be to beat the dead horse of our argument, but to define more carefully my own thinking.

Cheers!

Jeff says:

Let me leave my last word on this subject as succinctly as I know how: Science is the practice of creating hypotheses and then testing them. A hypothesis that goes untested — or that is inherently untestable — isn't science. It's speculation.

We would all agree that one component of science is the testing of hypotheses. (Of course there is a lot more to science that just that.)

If my example of dating ice cores and how that can be used to validate other testing methods didn't have any impact on your thinking, then I agree that we are really going in circles.

Anyway, thanks for your comments, they did bring up good points. The real problem is that for some of of your comments, a blog is simply not the best place to carry out any fruitful discussions.

Cheers.

I am a Darwinian who took (part of) a Bible college course in creation and creation science, and I have the answers for you. The pure Creationist will respond that the fossils are the remains of animals drowned in the Flood. The response to any question about dates, etc., is that "it says in the Bible that..." The response of the Creation Scientist always is "how do we know that the (half life of C14 or any other radioactive substance; alleged other suns; alleged other planets; alleged orbit of the earth about the sun; etc.) has always been the same as it is now. Especially what with the evolutionists constantly changing their stories every couple of centuries. From time to time, they enliven the discussion by inventing wierd explanations, which they justify with the same explanations. There is no science in Creation Science.

Commissar,

Calling Creationists "Flat-Earthers" only shows your own narrow-mindedness and bigotry.

I see the scientifically clueless occupy this blog as well.

'As to your original premise -- It is possible that there are two mechanism at work and both are correct. Just a few days ago we didn't know about the plant gene correcting for failure. The more we know the more we understand we know little.'

Exactly, which is why with each passing year science illuminates why age old superstitions have always been wrong through evidence and discovery.

then:
' Science is the practice of creating hypotheses and then testing them. A hypothesis that goes untested — or that is inherently untestable — isn't science. It's speculation.'

Halfright. Science is a process. a process of discovery through falsification. An experiment is one method of testing, but evidence can be falsified in a myriad of ways. Evolution is not speculation in the least. It is falsifiable and observable.

then the silly:
'What I'm saying is very simple: We don't know anything about the origin of life,'

actually we know quite alot, the actual mechanisms are what we are figuring out. Exciting thigns happening in abiogenesis.

'or how all living organisms descended from a single common ancestor. We have hypotheses, which is fine, but we also have just flat-out wild-ass guesses, which is not fine.

This is just flat out ignorance. We know that living organisms evolved from other organisms. It's so astoundingly simple that the mind boggles at the confusion.

"Complex organic molecules can form spontaneously" is a hypothesis; it can be tested. (So far, these tests have refuted rather than supported the hypothesis, but the game isn't over yet.)'

Actually your wrong there we get amino acids and protein molecules to form quite easily. You know the building blocks of it all. Your correct we haven't created a living cell yet but many labs are getting close. But yes this aspect can be tested and replicated.

'"Birds evolved from dinosaurs" is not a hypothesis. It's not a proposition that can be tested. It's just a wild-ass guess. It might be a wild-ass guess that fits the facts as we understand them and explains the evidence we have, but it's still just a wild-ass guess.'

This is so freaking stupid as to be related to the Wizbang level of discussion. It is not a wild ass guess if you have evidence to back up the claim. If the evidence fits the facts it makes a theory. Evidence gained through experimentation or observation is equally valid. We can gain evidence through more than one channel.

Do we have to test the earth revolving around the sun or is observation of the evidence sufficient?

'Calling it a "theory" makes a mockery of the scientific method'

No, not understanding the process of science makes a mockery of the scientific method. So I assume you think Dawkins, Gould, Hawking, Meyer,Miller, and Darwin had less understanding of this methodology than you do?

'Calling Creationists "Flat-Earthers" only shows your own narrow-mindedness and bigotry'

No it doesn't it shows an intellectual understanding that they are one in the same---just the modern version.

They will lose, they always have because simply they have no evidence to make a scientific case.

But they will cry and scream about it enough to drag our children back into the dark ages before we come to our senses.