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Author
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Topic: Details and grunt work
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Paul A. Nelson
Member
Member # 26
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posted 18. September 2002 23:02
Suppose we find a four year old child sitting atop a 300 foot high rock chimney in Monument Valley.
One group of investigators argue that the child climbed up the chimney by himself. Other investigators doubt this. They suggest that some funny business occurred.
But the first group –- let’s call them the “natural climbers” -– is unhappy with the funny business skeptics. “Look,” they say, “we’re doing all the hard work of figuring out how this kid actually made the ascent. You guys just sit around and pick holes in our scenarios. You say the child is too weak, that there aren’t enough hand or footholds even if he had the strength, that even professional climbers need special equipment -– blah, blah, blah. Nothing but sterile carping!”
Sorry, reply the skeptics, but it’s your hypothesis. If the child did not, in fact, climb the chimney, then there’s absolutely no virtue in expending effort to explain what never happened. Hard work in service of a false theory is not its own reward.
"But our group has shown that he could have climbed the first few feet!"
Right. But we found him sitting on the top. That puzzle is not five or ten percent explained by showing that the kid could clamber up the talus slope at the foot of the chimney. It's not explained at all.
In another thread here, following up a post by Bill Dembski, AndyG wrote:
quote:
Bill seems to be saying that the onus is on the biologists to describe in minute detail every step in the evolution of a biochemical system - ideally documenting every DNA mutation that led to such changes - despite the absence of a biochemical fossil record.
The onus is on evolutionary biologists to make their own naturalistic theory work. If that theory isn't true, then it will fall apart in various places. It is not the responsibility of design theorists to solve a problem that they think is predicated on a false theory.
Nor do they have any obligation to match the labor expended (the grunt work) in service of that theory. If the kid did not climb the rock chimney, there's no point in trying to figure out how he did it.
[ 18 September 2002, 23:26: Message edited by: Paul A. Nelson ]
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yersinia
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Member # 324
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posted 19. September 2002 00:35
Of course, once you've got hard evidence that the child was physically at numerous points along the ascent, and further you have evidence that at least the parts you can see were climbable by a 4-year old, and the mysterious parts aren't for-sure-sheer-cliffs but simply temporarily obscured by fog, then things look rather different, especially when none of those intermediate points is predicted by the "funny business" hypothesis, and we've had several cases of claimed unclimbability of foggy sections refuted by further data. Every additional discovery of an intermediate weakens the funny business hypothesis.
(BTW, here, as everywhere, it is so much easier to invoke the "poof" hypothesis...what, my dear Dr. Nelson, is to stop us from saying "an unknown unembodied designer put that kid there", and halt the investigation? If we actually did find a four-year old on top of this mountain, would **anyone** be satisfied by this "explanation?")
And of course, what if the situation is a 15-year old at the top of granite inselberg? Shouldn't we just be talking about the data rather than making up analogies biased one way or the other?
yersinia
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Leonid Andreev
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Member # 282
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posted 19. September 2002 03:49
The belles-lettres example of a child atop a high rock chimney by no means speaks in favor of the design theory. If a theory is based on heretofore unknown phenomena, it has to at least recourse to explanations to relevant known facts and/or to have a predictive capacity. If none of the above applies to a theory in question, the value of such a theory is close to an absolute zero. We all have seen how infants, who cannot yet walk, climb over stairs. One can calculate that getting to the top of a 300-foot mountain within a period of 6,000 years would require moving at a speed of as low as a little bit over 1 millimeter a month. So, from the scientific viewpoint, the problem does not represent anything utterly unexplainable. As for angels doing lifting works, nothing valid is known.
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«¥» Plump-DJ® «¥»
Member
Member # 402
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posted 19. September 2002 05:51
That's a nice analogy, but i'm sure all the 'Natural Climbers' will object by saying that their methods have been so succesful in the past so why abandon them now when we've only just started? I mean we once thought that lightning was caused when the God's were pi**ed but now we know better. So why explain the unknown's with an even greater unknowable? ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Cre8ionist
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Member # 140
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posted 19. September 2002 09:25
Paul,
I liked the analogy, insofar as it went. It should be obvious that those who didn't believe the child climbed the chimney could do additional work on solving the "mystery." For instance, perhaps a nearby ladder of sufficient height, or maybe even that helicopter parked over yonder. :-D
So there would be plenty of avenues to exhaust before resorting to the "poof" theory.
I resent the recurring notion, in all its forms, that design is a "science stopper."
As many people have stated before, myself included, it is evident that certain naturalistic theories of origins are "science stoppers," and if they don't put sceince to a complete halt, they certainly apply more than a simple foot to the brake.
I've mentioned the almost endless waste of time on the naturalistic origin of life scenarios, e.g., microspheres, proteinoids etc... Certainly spending endless years on climbing the chimney with one's hands tied behind their back isn't a very good use of our great scientific resources.
But if I may, there is another form of this naturalistic science stopping which was evidenced in Dembski's latest GA thread. This whole notion of horizontal gene swapping (something which definitely occurs through sophisticated cellular machinary, but to what extent, how far can you stretch it)?
Apparently, if a certain bacterium (say Thermotoga
maritima has some 24% gene similarity with known archaea genes
it is now attributed to a "massive gene exchange" and usually "at some time in the distant past."
So, once this concept of lateral gene transfer is invoked it's an EOS (end of story) line. Not that testing isn't done on current bacteria etc... but since this massive exchange had to of occurred long ago, there's really no easy way to falsify it. This concept is used to replace another naturalistic science stopper known as convergent evolution.
What IDers might consider common design, or programmers routinely do in copying and pasting methods and functions, we are now told happened through an non directed process (in the sense that the data transfer wasn't an intentional spreading of a certain new capability to another type of creature) that we can't test. One has to ask what this massive gene swapping
does to the gene-based evolutionary trees?
In any case, back to the point of the thread, I suppose the evolutionists could simply say that the child leaped up onto the chimney.........Cre8
[ 19 September 2002, 09:30: Message edited by: Cre8ionist ]
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Paul A. Nelson
Member
Member # 26
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posted 19. September 2002 09:25
Of course one can tell the story in ways that make the "natural climb" hypothesis more plausible. I was trying to explain why design theorists are left cold by complaints such as "Hey, we naturalistic evolutionists are doing all the work here! -- we've got the only causal theories on the blackboard" and so on. Someone who is persuaded that the germ theory of infection is better supported by the evidence than its competitors is not going to be moved by the complaints of a noxious vapors advocate that he (Mr. Noxious Vapors) is putting in a lot of effort to support his theory. Hard work on behalf of a false theory is not evidence (although I should have mentioned that scientific investigation, even on behalf of false theories, does have the wonderful side benefit of adding to our knowledge: Columbus ran into the New World on his way to the Indies).
[ 19 September 2002, 09:26: Message edited by: Paul A. Nelson ]
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yersinia
Member
Member # 324
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posted 19. September 2002 13:35
Hi Paul,
You appear to be trying to ameliorate the "emotional" issue of relative effort expended, but really the prime issues are the logical ones of:
(1) Just how much success has evolutionary immunology had (the standard for science being, making and confirming hypotheses, not Dembski's were-you-there-type requirement)
...and...
(2) The claims of the ID movement about said field.
It looks like I won't get anyone else to bite the bullet and reply on the issue, but I haven't tried you yet. Thumbs-up or thumbs-down on these two statements of prominent IDists:
quote:
We can look high or we can look low, in books or in journals, but the result is the same. The scientific literature has no answers to the question of the origin of the immune system." [Behe, Darwin's Black Box, p. 138, bold added]
quote:
...the Darwinian community has been utterly stymied in explaining the emergence of irreducibly complex systems once the complexity of these systems becomes palpable. [Dembski, NFL, p. 286, bold added]
yersinia
(link back to original immune system thread)
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Paul A. Nelson
Member
Member # 26
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posted 19. September 2002 15:11
Hi Yersinia,
When I read the manuscript of Darwin's Black Box in 1995, several months before its publication, I told Mike Behe that the ensuing debate would come to revolve around what constituted an explanation in evolutionary theory. I now feel justified in hanging out my shingle as a prophet. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
The problem -- well, one of the problems -- in this debate is the lack of shared epistemological standards among participants. You look at the evolutionary immunology literature and see great progress. Others, on the ID side of the aisle, react differently (witness the immunology thread).
It's enough to make one believe in the incommensurability of paradigms.
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andyg
Member
Member # 415
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posted 19. September 2002 15:43
Paul's analogy is actually based on a true-life encounter that took place on the patio of The Panda's Thumb, the most popular watering hole of the University of Ediacara. This is the sort of place where no turn is left unstoned in the search for man's origins. Anyhow, the conversation went something like this:
Paul: Hey Andy, look!
Andy: (grunts) Hang on, let me put down my beer. (Sound of beer keg hitting the floor). Whassup?
Paul: Richard Dawkins is sitting on top of that chimney again.
Andy: Oh no. How did he get up there this time.
Paul: The ghost of Stephen Jay Gould put him there.
Andy: What??? Don't be ridiculous!
Paul: I'm serious - the ghost of Stephen Jay Gould put him there.
Andy: And I thought *I* had been drinking heavily! Look, Richard climbs that chimney all the time. You know what happens on Fridays - he stays in to watch his favourite TV drama "Touched by a Secular Humanist", and then he comes down the Thumb, gets a few scoops inside him and climbs the chimney. We've seen it all before.
Paul: No one has evidence that Dawkins climbed the chimney.
Andy: What do you mean? How else did he get there?
Paul: Simple. The ghost of Stephen Jay Gould put him there.
Andy: **Sigh**. Look. We know that evolutionary biologists, especially philosophical naturalists like Dawkins are always climbing chimneys. It's just what they do.
Paul: Right.
Andy: Right. So that's how he got up there today.
Paul: Prove it.
Andy: Look - Theodosius over there saw him halfway up ten minutes ago. Right Theo?
Theo: **Burp**. Oops, sorry. Yeah, right.
Paul: Yeah right indeed! So how did he get halfway?
Andy: Well, he climbed.
Paul: No he didn't. The ghost of Stephen Jay Gould put him halfway up the chimney..
Andy: Hang on a minute. Garcon! Another barrel of the Burgess Shale Brown Ale please! Now where was I? Oh, yes…. Dr. Doolittle took some pictures of him climbing. Where is he? Russell? Oh, he's over in the corner talking to the Aquatic Ape again…..
Doolittle: It's true! I was trying out my new Pentax, and I have a few snapshots of him four, eight and twelve feet off the ground.
Paul: Pah! So what?
Andy: What do you mean, so what?
Paul: How do you know he climbed between four and eight feet?
Andy: Look. We know Dawkins climbs chimneys when he gets drunk. Theo saw him halfway up the chimney. Russ has some snapshots of him getting to halfway. And you're saying that….
Paul: ……that the ghost of Stephen Jay Gould moved him from four to eight feet..
Andy: Oh brother. We're getting into one of those Stephen Jay Gould of the gaps arguments again, aren't we?
Paul: Well actually, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not get into whether it was the ghost of Stephen Jay Gould or not. I think the identity of the entity that put Richard Dawkins on top of the chimney is irrelevant to the discussion.
Andy: You just want to say that…….
Paul: ….that some unknown entity put him on top of the chimney, yes.
Andy: And aren't you a little bit curious about exactly how that happened?
Paul: Nope.
Andy: You don't care whether it used a crane?
Paul: Nope?
Andy: Or a helicopter?
Paul: Nope.
Andy: All that matters to you is the fact that some entity put Richard Dawkins on top of the chimney.
Paul: Well, I'm actually hoping this will open up a whole new field of chimney-placement investigation.
Andy: Sheesh.
(silence, punctuated by thoughtful burping)
Paul: And that's another thing.
Andy: What.
Paul: You were spawned in a vat.
Andy: WHAT????
Paul: Well, not you. Your great-great granddaddy.
Andy: You've been eating too many of the pickled amphioxus, haven't you? What on earth are you talking about?
Paul: Who's your daddy?
Andy: Colin.
Paul: And your granddaddy?
Andy: Arthur.
Paul: And your great-granddaddy?
Andy: Charles.
Paul: And your great-great granddaddy?
Andy: I don't know….
Paul (in the manner of one making a clinching argument): AHA!!! See?
Andy: What?
Paul: Your great-great granddaddy was spawned in a vat.
Andy: You have absolutely no evidence to suggest that.
Paul: Look. You can't trace you family tree back to your great-great granddaddy. Ergo, he was spawned in a vat.
Andy: This is ridiculous. There's no record of people being spawned in a vat, with the possible exception of Jerry Falwell and Cher. Besides, many people have better family trees than mine.
Paul: As my friend Bill would say, the evidence of your family tree is pathetic. Face it, vat-boy, you were spawned. Stands to reason.
Andy: And who spawned my great-great granddaddy in a vat, then?
Paul: I'm not getting into that with you.
Andy: It wasn't the ghost of Stephen Jay Gould, was it?
THE END
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djmullen
unregistered
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posted 20. September 2002 01:16
Paul A. Nelson wrote:
quote:
The problem -- well, one of the problems -- in this debate is the lack of shared epistemological standards among participants. You look at the evolutionary immunology literature and see great progress. Others, on the ID side of the aisle, react differently (witness the immunology thread).
Behe didn't appear to even look. He wrote that there's nothing in the literature on the origin of the immune system. Follow Yersinia's link to the discussion on that topic and you'll see that Behe managed to miss about a metric ton of literature on exactly that. And there's been another ton published since Black Box.
Would it be asking too much for the ID side to present their evidence on exactly how the human immune system came into existence? I don't mean saying, "The Designer did it." That's your hypothesis . Our hypothesis is that Darwinian evolution did it and we can show you libraries stuffed full of details on how it happened. Where is the evidence for the ID hypothesis?
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Paul A. Nelson
Member
Member # 26
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posted 20. September 2002 11:11
Hi Andy,
I suspect this thread is in imminent danger of being closed down.
I liked your story: very amusing. BTW, I'm all in favor of more stories involving the consumption of beer.
I have to leave all Brainstorms discussions until after 9/27, to prepare for my lectures at the ID conference being held at the University of San Francisco:
http://www.ideacenter.org/usf2002/
Anyone in the Bay Area who wants to say hello should stop by. I'll buy at least one pitcher.
[ 20 September 2002, 11:16: Message edited by: Paul A. Nelson ]
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andyg
Member
Member # 415
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posted 20. September 2002 16:49
Quoth Paul Nelson:
Hard work on behalf of a false theory is not evidence (although I should have mentioned that scientific investigation, even on behalf of false theories, does have the wonderful side benefit of adding to our knowledge: Columbus ran into the New World on his way to the Indies).
End quote.
This seems to be implying that evolution by natural selection is a false theory. This is a rather sweeping claim, and one which is also clearly wrong. I very much doubt that Paul is actually implying that evolution itself is false, nor that natural selection is one of several mechanisms by which evolution happens. Indeed, Behe, for example, pretty much accepts common descent – or he did when I last saw him comment on it.
What I think Paul is getting at is whether evolution might be "false" in the context of biochemical systems. Again, it is clear that biochemical systems can change over relatively short periods of time – for example, Sean Carroll’s work on the control of melanism in fruit flies by the yellow locus (Wittkopp et al., Development volume 129, pp 1849-58; Wittkopp et al., Current Biology volume 12, pp1547-1556). David Kingsley and Katie Peichel’s work on stickleback evolution is going to yield some wonderful data on the molecular control of skeletal elements over relatively short (10,000 year) time periods too.
How about the particular class of biochemical systems that some people label as IC? Is evolution "false" for these as a general case, or for particular cases? Again, we simply don’t know. The IC/SC line of argument seeks to identify features about a system that designate it as IC/SC and then links this labeling to the assertion that an IC/SC system is unlikely to have evolved.
Behe’s example of a flagellum is instructive in this respect. At the time he wrote the book, Behe was unaware that the flagellar system can still function as a protein secretory system if parts of the flagellum are mutated. That work came after the publication of his book. This illustrates two points – firstly, that labeling something IC is provisional until every component of the system has been mutated, and secondly (as Behe now acknowledges) that a system can have a part removed and still exhibit functionality, even if it does not do so with the original part in place. A number of people have suggested that the type III secretory system could be a precursor to the flagellum. Others (e.g. Saier) have suggested that the relationship might be the other way round. Clearly this line of research is going to continue to yield interesting results.
This is all good healthy scientific debate. The point that I want to emphasize in response to Paul is that these new ideas that emerged after Behe’s book came out are all a result of exactly the work that he claims ID proponents need not engage in. In other words, we do not label a theory as true or false and walk away – we should assess the strength of the theory repeatedly in the light of new data. I think this is what Paul is saying when he refers to the benefit of working on "false theories". Paul should admit that the label of IC and the consequent inference of design and rejection of evolution for that system is as good as the data available to us at the time. Put more simply, it is much harder to confirm a negative result than a positive one.
Perhaps Paul is saying, as Bill Dembski appears to be saying too, that evolution of IC biochemical systems is "false" until we are able to provide (in Bill’s words) "a complete evolutionary path" for its origins. This would certainly be a novel approach to doing science – to label a theory as false until we are convinced that it is true! To propose that a competing theory (ID) is true until the original theory (evolution) is shown to be true – which is what Bill seems to be saying – is especially odd.
AndyG
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