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Author
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Topic: Virtues of Scientists
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Mike Gene
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Member # 149
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posted 21. April 2003 21:48
Perhaps we can put the pre-publication peer review process to the test, at least regarding ID. Let's say I take my cytosine deamination/IHE stuff and put it together for submission. Do you think there is room for it in the peer-reviewed literature? Or do you think it is lacking in some fashion such that it does not deserve the wider peer review that comes with publication?
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RBH
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posted 21. April 2003 22:52
Mike Gene wrote quote:
Perhaps we can put the pre-publication peer review process to the test, at least regarding ID. Let's say I take my cytosine deamination/IHE stuff and put it together for submission. Do you think there is room for it in the peer-reviewed literature? Or do you think it is lacking in some fashion such that it does not deserve the wider peer review that comes with publication?
I'm not professionally competent to referee such a paper, but one thing is certain: If you don't put it together and hunt a publication outlet, it's certain not to be published. In the 1990s I developed what was for its field a heretical notion. I spent 10 years putting together data (both reviewed in existing literature and data I generated in my own research) and getting it into a form that (with help from a sympathetic editor) was publishable. Ten years. It's had a payoff, which is one reason my MDT work has suffered - the business my company does has more than quintupled since the series of papers was published. So it ain't easy. Not trying is the easiest course.
RBH
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gedanken
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Member # 594
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posted 22. April 2003 00:15
So if there was any suggestion of eliminating the peer review process, it appears to have been conceded as a necessary process. So now the remaining issues are simply the details of that peer review process, not its requirement as an essential part of publication process.
Who decides on what that review process is? Is there a governmental agency that decides what is published? Is this decided upon by vote in the political process? Or is publishing handled by capitalistic companies that really do whatever they want, answerable only to the sales of their product? (And if so, “doing whatever they want,” do they not decide essentially in a democratic way by way of the readers choosing or not choosing to buy their “product,” the published journals? Isn’t the real measure of the quality of the review and of the journal the degree of respect that is given in the scientific community -- in part registered by the importance given by the purchasers of the journals that such journals be purchased?)
If publishing scientific journals is a capitalistic enterprise, then we have little say in those company’s practices. What we have a say in is whether we respect their journals, whether (as individual) scientists try to get things published, and whether we ask for the journals by purchasing or requesting of our libraries. As such this is essentially democratic. So what is the value of this speculation on what “they” should do? All we can change is what we do! (And of course I intend to support in general a very successful system of scientific publication. If the ID community wishes to influence the scientific community, it would need to convince them of the value of what they have to say. This might best be done by writing articles that are convincing, and submitting them to the places that such scientists are likely to read -- i.e. the scientific journals.)
ISCID is essentially a capitalistic venture (non-profit is basically irrelevant, they organize under rules for corporations, make or fail to make money to support their operation, pay their employees and use suggestion to influence others to help as possible or needed). We (i.e. critics of ID) have no say in their review practices. The purchasing public decides if this is a prestigious and important journal, if it is a journal worth reading.
[ 22. April 2003, 00:30: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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warren_bergerson
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Member # 262
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posted 22. April 2003 07:44
Mike,
Fifteen years ago the pre-publication peer review process would, I suspect, made publication of any pro-ID interpretation of your research highly unlikely. The development of the Internet means the power of pre-publication peer review has been greatly reduced. It seems likely that you could get your research published/posted, and as gedanken points out, if the research is ‘interesting’, it will get as wide a circulation as it would published in a major journal.
Human nature being what it is, your research is likely to be judged as interesting if 1)it solves a long standing problem, 2)it shows that traditional science seriously messed up, or 3)it introduces an idea that has the potential of making money.
Gedanken brings up the interesting idea of ‘reviewing the review process’. As he accurately points out, most groups and/sites offering to present and distribute information prefer to maintain control of the review, moderation process. However, if one ultimately wants to create an open unbiased site that allows for open unbiased discussion by scientists with a wide range of views and backgrounds, then it would seem like a potentially useful idea to make the review process open for review and discussion.
The subject of this thread is the ‘virtue of science’. Peer review, IMO, is an example of 1)modern academic science at least temporarily abandoning one of the traditional virtues of science-open and unbiased review and 2)technology making possible a return to traditional virtues. It can also be suggested that 1)explicit formulation of mathematically predictive theories and 2)one test falsification are traditional virtues of science which have been abandoned in many areas of modern academic science. Maybe the Internet will also make it possible to return to these traditional virtues.
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gedanken
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Member # 594
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posted 22. April 2003 11:24
Warren seems to have skipped over some of the subtlety of my post. The point was that we always had that power, simply by choosing to read whatever “journal” we wanted to read. But the power of the vast majority of scientists, as are respected by the population as a whole for their accomplishments, puts scientists in control of scientific review. It is the population as a whole who decides to give scientist a respected position in society, and ultimately the population as a whole that decides who they consider to be “scientists”. But the population as a whole allows the successful scientific enterprise to be largely self-defining -- precisely because it is viewed as being so successful in providing solutions to many problems that the public thinks is worth solving, and the public appears to largely continue to support the activity of scientists. Then those who are judged by the public to be “scientists” define the properties of review of the journals they choose to read -- and the review practices thereof thereby.
The “noise” level of the internet makes publication by non-respected sources difficult. Of course it does allow for groups to mislead the public by political means to create artificial positive feelings toward information outlets. (We see this regularly occurring in business driven media, and it can also occur in political driven media including the media of the internet itself.) So we have a sort of competition occurring for belief in what is important. Ultimately it will obey a sort of Darwinian process -- that which survives is that which is supported and this is related to its usefulness to humanity but not directly or immediately. It is my hope that humanity makes use of its education to judge media in meaningful ways, that individuals use their ability to think to judge what they are hearing, reading. This is not assured.
Of course an “unbiased” publication is impossible. If any restriction whatsoever is placed on what is published -- that is a certain kind of “bias”. Even brainstorms has censorship by moderators -- and is not unbiased because there is a bias toward civility, certain posting styles, and attention to the subject matter at minimum. A truly unbiased publication publishes every paper and thus becomes worthless because the reader is not getting the benefit of the bias of the filtering down of the information overload. That is why we depend on information outlets -- precisely because of their bias in filtering what we hear to a consumable amount of information. We choose the bias by choosing the outlet we prefer. There is no “unbiased” outlet that is not simultaneously overloading on our personal resources. (Consider the internet as a whole to be such an “outlet”.)
Now I believe that a great deal of the feelings on this thread of negativity toward the current “peer review” process in mainstream scientific journals is related to claimed difficulty in getting papers published that support ID. But of course there are a number of possibilities. One is that no papers have been submitted to mainstream peer-reviewed journals that actually contain consistent internal logic and which actually are focused on the type of subject matter of the particular journal in question.
So here is my challenge to the ID community:
Rather than complain about the peer review process, the ID community should actually produce high quality papers suitable for mainstream scientific journals. Then they should attempt to get those papers published. (I note that Behe has claimed to have done that, for example, and he has posted fragments of rejection letters.)
But none of those papers that have been rejected by the mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journals have been made available for inspection by groups like here at ISCID.
My challenge is two parts:
1) Do and attempt to publish such articles.
2) After such supposed rejection, publish the particular article on ISCID -- along with the rejection letters!
The reason that I think that will be illuminative? I think that we will be able to see precisely why they were rejected -- we will be able to view any inconsistency of logic, for example, that would disqualify that paper as being of quality for the mainstream peer-reviewed journal.
This is of course speculation on my part. So show me wrong by actually following those steps, and after final publication on ISCID we can review those issues for ourselves!
[ 22. April 2003, 11:36: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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RBH
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posted 22. April 2003 13:01
Gedanken wrote quote:
Now I believe that a great deal of the feelings on this thread of negativity toward the current "peer review" process in mainstream scientific journals is related to claimed difficulty in getting papers published that support ID. But of course there are a number of possibilities. One is that no papers have been submitted to mainstream peer-reviewed journals that actually contain consistent internal logic and which actually are focused on the type of subject matter of the particular journal in question.
Apropos of that claimed difficulty, I had an interesting conversation with a former colleague two weeks ago on this precise topic. Until recently he was the editor of a journal in biology, a good second-rank ecology/evolutionary biology journal. He said that in 13 years of editing it, he never once saw a submission that was perceptibly related to either YEC or ID, so he never had the opportunity to accept or reject one. He said further that had one been submitted, and had it met the journal's criteria for a contribution to the field, he would have published it regardless of its pro- or anti-ID implications. He's an honorable man, one I've known for over 30 years personally and professionally, and I believe him. (That's one reason I tend to get impatient with the 'Darwinist conspiracy to suppress ID' muttering one occasionally hears: it is an implicit and unjustified insult to a professional I know well.)
Gedanken's suggestion is a good one. For decades it has been common for working papers and pre-publication versions of articles to be circulated among one's professional acquaintances for comment, criticism, and feedback. Nowadays the Web serves as a vehicle for such circulation and it's easy to do. I second Gedanken's motion to urge IDists to make those kinds of things available. That's one potential route to respectability, and could serve both the scientific enterprise and the ID enterprise.
RBH
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Christopher M. Langan
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Member # 264
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posted 22. April 2003 15:36
quote:
That's one potential route to respectability, and could serve both the scientific enterprise and the ID enterprise.
It's hard to say that more communication between the neo-Darwinist and ID camps wouldn't be a good thing. (Of course, communication doesn't always work when one or both sides of a conflict already have their minds made up.)
However, as I understand the ID agenda, the scientific and ID "enterprises" are one and the same (at least when it is duly acknowledged that science embraces the mathematical as well as the empirical sciences). Any other assertion would imply that science has necessary inbuilt restrictions which exclude ID-type hypotheses, or that ID is somehow exclusory of science. Of course, this has not yet been established. Nor has it been established that it is properly up to ID to win the approval of those who believe in such restrictions.
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gedanken
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posted 22. April 2003 23:35
quote:
However, as I understand the ID agenda, the scientific and ID "enterprises" are one and the same (at least when it is duly acknowledged that science embraces the mathematical as well as the empirical sciences). Any other assertion would imply that science has necessary inbuilt restrictions which exclude ID-type hypotheses, or that ID is somehow exclusory of science.
I refer to them distinctly for the following reason:
A) I don't believe that all ID advocates write or discuss things in a way that I think is "scientific". I have been to several presentations, in churches, and in organized conferences, where ID is discussed as much in political terms as claimed to be "scientific" terms. And I can say that at some of these presentations (even ones in which Dr. Dembski participated) that much of the so-called "science" is appalingly inaccurate and misleading. So from that basis I don't acknowledge that "ID" (in the larger movement) is a subset of "science".
B) Suppose that there are a subset of scientists interested in ID, and that there is a scientific presentation of ID. Then this would be a subset of all of science (if it existed), and thus is not the same set as "science" itself. Thus even in this case, "science" and "ID" are distinct sets.
quote:
Any other assertion would imply that science has necessary inbuilt restrictions which exclude ID-type hypotheses, or that ID is somehow exclusory of science.
I find that many ID presentations fail at logic or consistency with observational evidence (however much ID advocates try or claim such consistency). As such, those presentations fail an important bias and inbuilt restriction in that logical consistency and consistency with observational evidence from the real world are baises or restrictions of science.
But I certainly agree that ID should aspire to such goals as Chris noted. Perhaps if we point out the logical inconsistencies and inconsistencies with observation then ID advocates can make repairs (in such places of failure thereof) so as to meet those restrictions of science and have greater probability of becoming publishable material.
quote:
... (at least when it is duly acknowledged that science embraces the mathematical as well as the empirical sciences).
As to empirical, one must demonstrate the empirical consistency of the particular ID claim for it to be empirical. (Including that the claim is inherently subject to empirical verifiction, as it is possible to make claims that do not admit such.) As to "mathematical" it must have consistent mathematical proof and logic. Quasi-mathematical arguments are not "mathematical", they involve things outside of mathematics. And mathematics, per se, is not part of science. Once a mathematical proof is satisfactorily demonstrated, it is valid logic for use in scientific argument -- but the mathematics per se is not science. Most important is that quasi-mathematical arugment does not have the power of proof behind it for the most part, and thus requires some sort of empirical validation in the particular application. Such validation then means that the quasi-mathematical argument is not per se valid scientific "logic", rather could be a subject for scientific testing if such tests are organized.
[ 23. April 2003, 00:01: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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Christopher M. Langan
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posted 23. April 2003 02:49
quote:
But I certainly agree that ID should aspire to such goals as Chris noted. Perhaps if we point out the logical inconsistencies and inconsistencies with observation then ID advocates can make repairs (in such places of failure thereof) so as to meet those restrictions of science and have greater probability of becoming publishable material.
ID has been defined in a such a way as to satisfy valid scientific criteria. Any criterion that its definition fails to satisfy is of dubious validity and therefore less than scientific, e.g. the assumption that all truths about nature can be meaningfully reduced to first-order predicates transforming either randomly or by Markovian laws of physics. In principle, logic permits the consistent formulation of natural truths for which this is simply not the case, and that puts these hypotheses beyond the reach of standard scientific methodology (but not necessarily beyond the reach of mathematics). A case can be made that this problem resides in the unrealistic restrictiveness of the scientific method rather than with the hypotheses in question.
Regardless of the shortcomings of the "many ID presentations" to which you refer, the fundamental thesis of ID theory is perfectly consistent with the observational evidence. On the other hand, many scientific theories do not satisfy the mathematical requirements of logic. One of the logical criteria of which scientific theories tend to fall short is that of having a model. Although ID theory is often criticized for this reason, it is no less true of many other fields of science, including even the most fundamental. Those familiar with the problems bedeviling various branches of physics and cosmology know this quite well; for example, the seeming absence of a joint interpretation of classical and quantum mechanics leaves a gap, virtually devoid of known causal principles, between the microscopic and macroscopic scales of physical reality...scales that biological evolution happens to bridge. It follows that less fundamental branches of science, which rely on physics for their understandings of nature and causality, also lack consistent models. Among the things that scientists don't yet know is whether a consistent model of nature and causality will permit certain facts of nature to be mathematically deduced rather than merely approximated by empirical induction.
By the way, mathematics is indeed a part of science. In its purest forms, its purpose is to characterize abstract structures that display sufficient internal consistency to be eligible for physical embodiment. Because it is thus more general than physics, it does not need physics to accomplish its ends. Physics, on the other hand, needs mathematics very, very badly, and so does every science for which physical reducibility is claimed (including evolutionary biology). This strongly suggests that mathematics represents the structure of nature more deeply and comprehensively than do more concrete branches of science. In any case, the line between mathematics and physics is notoriously difficult to draw...far more difficult than some of those who talk about it seem to impy.
I'm sure that most serious ID researchers have no objection to the demand that ID be held to scientific standards within the limitations of these standards. What I question is the arbitrary sanctification of these standards themselves. Many scientists seem not to realize that certain very basic conventional assumptions of science, far from being ironclad facts of nature, remain points of controversy. Some of these points of controversy reside squarely in the intersect of neo-Darwinism and ID theory. Under these circumstances, an open mind is perhaps the most indispensable scientific virtue of all.
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warren_bergerson
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posted 23. April 2003 07:05
Gedanken,
I think your analogy of ‘science as a business whose customers are the public’ is valid and useful. Certainly all but a very small minority of the population is supportive of the general concept of science and particularly supportive of the practical benefits attributed to scientific analysis.
As long as academic science with its pre-publication peer review has an effective monopoly on abstract or theoretical science, then the public will support the institutions of academic science. The question I raised is "What would happen if academic science had a competitor?". What would happen if there was an alternative business or process for developing and evaluating the validity of scientific hypotheses?
The process of doing analysis, writing a paper, getting it reviewed and published, then waiting for feedback is slow and not particularly efficient or effective. If the process includes a significant degree of bias in the pre-publication review process, the publish and review process becomes even more inefficient (at least IMO).
Using modern technology, it is not particularly difficult to design alternative processes for developing and testing/validating scientific hypotheses. If such a process was established in direct competition with academic science, the result would at least be interesting. Such a competitor for academic science would be particularly interesting if it 1)rejected hypotheses accepted by academic science, 2)accepted hypotheses rejected by academic science, 3)produced hypotheses where none have been produced by academic science, and/or 4)led to solutions to practical problems that are not solvable based on academic science.
Scientists whose ideas have been summarily rejected by academic science, this includes a wide range of different intelligent design concepts, might be potential participants in a competing scientific process. If a competing scientific process or business has a reasonable degree of success, then it is not unreasonable to expect that the public support for the existing academic monopoly could fade quite rapidly.
Janitor’s ‘the virtues of science’ is a useful and interesting subject of discussion. A second interesting topic might be ‘what type of scientific businesses or institutions can actually practice the traditional virtues of science?’
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Cre8ionist
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Member # 140
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posted 23. April 2003 08:43
Some of the arguments being made by the pro pre-pub side are reminiscent of what the major
news outlets were saying about bias in the media, e.g., ged "The point was that
we always had that power, simply by choosing to read whatever “journal” we wanted to
read."
True, but in the case of the media "Fox news" finally broke the mold for how to do the news and really began to shed the one sided-ness. Perhaps when some major science rag/pub breaks the mold and becomes less prejudiced against those scientists who question the impact of NDT , they'll rise to greater heights (Fox is leader of the news pack NOW), and we'll all benefit. BTW, getting published "somewhere" is not the same thing as getting published in a major science publication. Let's not kid ourselves. One thing critics constantly say about Darwin's Black Box (widely read), was that it wasn't published conventionally. Had to do it as a book. Look at Ira Flatow's "Science Friday" when Stephen Meyer/L. Krauss were on for an example:
quote:
L. KRAUSS:...What these people have is an agenda, a
religious agenda, and they couch it in what looks like scientific language,
except they don’t have the courage to publish generally in the scientific
literature. In 10 million articles in science journals over the past 12 years,
the key words ‘intelligent design’ appeared only 88 times, and all but 11 of
them were in engineering articles.
Dr. MEYER: Excuse me. That’s really a cheap debater’s trick. As we
discussed at the Ohio board meeting, the theory of intelligent design, first
of all, which is not the main issue here, is a new theory, and it is being
advanced in the same way that new theories in the history of science
have always been advanced, and that is by peer-reviewed books. And
the two main and most important books that are seminal to the intelligent
design movement, "The Design Inference" by William Dembski, published
by Cambridge University Press, and Michael Behe’s book, "Darwin’s Black
Box," were both peer reviewed and that is one of the reasons there is
interest in this new theory. But that’s not...
FLATOW: Dr. Meyer, you have me at a loss here, because I always
thought that the way science was advanced was in peer-reviewed
journals...
Dr. KRAUSS: Exactly.
FLATOW: ...not in peer-reviewed books where you publish...
...........................................................................Cre8
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gedanken
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posted 23. April 2003 13:57
Cre8tionist said:
quote:
True, but in the case of the media "Fox news" finally broke the mold for how to do the news and really began to shed the one sided-ness.
But of course “Fox News” was precisely what I was thinking of as an example of greater and non-objective bias. That is not a point for argument here -- my point was that different people have different views of that bias, demonstrating the very point that various outlets have differing biases, and no information outlet can avoid having some sort of bias. That any selection of information occurs at all reflects some sort of bias, and the only question of “objectivity” in the media sense is one of covering a range of viewers.
The bias in science is pushed in a certain direction. Because of the bias toward verification with observation, and strict adherence to logical reasoning, there is apparently an improvement in the ability of those methods to match up with the actual characteristics of the real physical world. Doing this has proved useful in the offshoots of technology, medicine, etc., that are spin-offs from scientific research, and Western success in those subjects is reflective of the accuracy of the bias of the scientific method in reflecting the real physical world. Also that bias makes science a bad subject for analysis of many subjects that cannot be resolved purely by observation and logic based on real-world evidence. (Once again I’m not claiming that religion is not in part dependent on observation of the real world, just like “science”, but that religion additionally takes presuppositions that are not agreed to widely and universally as part of the arguments of religious nature. So I don’t argue in any way about the “truth” of any religious view, except when that view is inconsistent with observation of physical reality and makes a claim about physical reality.
That Behe’s book was a popular book is simply a statement of the lack of positive evidence for acceptance in the scientific community. The popular press is not a “respected outlet” of the scientific community. The criticism is not to mean that a book that is published to be popular press is inherently suspect, rather it is not inherently validated by the scientific community as being worthwhile.
Behe has rejection letters for articles he claims to have submitted to the mainstream peer-reviewed scientific press. But he does not publish for our inspection what those articles were. If he were to make those articles available, we then might be able to see if there was good reason for the peer reviewed press to reject them. I think Behe is afraid to make them public because that would show that the reason they were rejected is actual failures of the article itself that errors can be easily be shown. Thus he can continue to decry the type of bias in the scientific journals, claiming it as a specific bias against ID rather than a bias against poor logic and failure to make empirical observations. Thanks to Cre8 for the quote from Krauss, as I think it supports my comments.
Warren said:
quote:
As long as academic science with its pre-publication peer review has an effective monopoly on abstract or theoretical science, then the public will support the institutions of academic science. The question I raised is "What would happen if academic science had a competitor?"
If ID becomes a competitor by political means and produces nothing useful for society that leads to greater understanding in the form of predictability or usability of information from nature, then it is a distraction. However if it actually produces useful results (in the future, I have seen none yet) then the public may take interest. I personally work against the use of politics to promote supposedly scientific views, but I also try to ask useful questions and to understand views being presented to see if there is anything useful. I think that part of the ID movement goals are to change the definition of what is useful, because some religious views are considered “useful” and thus many wish those goals to be encompassed in the teaching in classroom settings, even though the subject is the physical nature of the physical world.
Chris Langham said:
quote:
Regardless of the shortcomings of the "many ID presentations" to which you refer, the fundamental thesis of ID theory is perfectly consistent with the observational evidence.
I’m not convinced of that. Some ID thesis may be testable. And there may be concepts that are consistent but not differentiated by observation. Simple consistency is not sufficient for a subject to be “scientific”. (Pink magical invisible pixies creating what we view might be “consistent” with observation, but hardly “scientific” unless some empirical observation can differentiate the cases of their pinkness, magic capabilities, invisibility, and/or existence whatsoever.)
quote:
… e.g. the assumption that all truths about nature can be meaningfully reduced to first-order predicates transforming either randomly or by Markovian laws of physics.
Yes, indeed. I have seen specific individuals promote that all truths of nature can be reduced to scientific observation. Some very strongly philosophical positions against all religion may manifest in such claims. These are not “scientific” claims, any more than claims of support for religion that are not backed by empirical evidence that actually differentiates the claims being made. Chris, is there something in the science of evolution which claims that we observe a vast grid of consistency with certain patterns of descent with modification (and theories within theories of the details thereof) that is furthermore claiming completeness of explanation of “truth”?
Is mathematics part of science? Is basic logic part of science? Is natural language itself used in communicating science “part of science”? Is visual presentation in its most generic form “part of science”? Certainly in one way all of these are. So in art class am I learning “science”? (I’ve certainly found my art experience useful for things that relate to science -- I can draw to make clear my ideas in a visual manner.) Science badly needs mathematics, logic, pictorial representation, natural language, printing or other means of information communication.
quote:
Many scientists seem not to realize that certain very basic conventional assumptions of science, far from being ironclad facts of nature, remain points of controversy.
Many ID enthusiasts fail to recognize that they are failing to differentiate the case they are making based simply on empirical observation and logic. They point to a failure to accept an argument that fails on that basis as a bias inherent in science. I ask for specifics, not a vague generalized discussion. ID covers such wide ground that any argument about the scientific nature of ID must get into the details of the individual case. The failures can be all over the map, so claims for or against can’t be categorized simply.
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Christopher M. Langan
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posted 23. April 2003 15:34
Gedinken writes:
quote:
I’m not convinced of that. Some ID thesis may be testable. And there may be concepts that are consistent but not differentiated by observation. Simple consistency is not sufficient for a subject to be “scientific”. (Pink magical invisible pixies creating what we view might be “consistent” with observation, but hardly “scientific” unless some empirical observation can differentiate the cases of their pinkness, magic capabilities, invisibility, and/or existence whatsoever.)
My point, of course, was that one can establish truth in nature by mathematical as well as scientific means. For example, in order to prove that 2+2=4 in nature, one doesn’t need to run an experiment in which one puts two marbles in an empty glass jar, peers inside, adds two more and then runs a final count. One can simply use arithmetic and count on nature (pun intended) to follow suit. Scientists have no good reason to assume that nothing of this nature is possible in the more advanced realms of logic and mathematics. So although some ID hypotheses may indeed be empirically testable, mathematical verification may be more appropriate for others.
By the way, not to be too judgmental, but I’m finding your picture of science a little naïve. First you tried to illustrate a point about the supposed feasibility of time travel by counting to 10 and back again [counting integers in a denumerable (discontinuous) sequence is not enough to provide science with a serviceable model of time and causality]; now it’s pink magical invisible pixies. If you've adopted this style of expression because you believe that your thoughts are so complex that others can understand them only if you take them down to the kindergarten level, then I’d suggest that it may not be quite that bad. On lists like this one, you might not need to oversimplify to the extent of obscuring what might otherwise have been an interesting point.
You observe that "many ID enthusiasts fail to recognize that they are failing to differentiate the case they are making based simply on empirical observation and logic." Wisely, you use the term many rather than all. Thus, when you go on to say that "they point to a failure to accept an argument that fails on that basis as a bias inherent in science," you’re not talking about all ID theorists. Regarding your request for specifics rather than "a vague generalized discussion", I’m being as specific as I need to be. In particular, when it comes to providing ID with a supporting model, the details of individual cases are strictly secondary. This can be clearly seen in the fact that no matter how many details are offered by ID theorists, they are dismissed by neo-Darwinists for lack of an underlying causal model. So it seems that before these detailed arguments will be accepted, ID requires a basic supporting model of nature and causation.
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RBH
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posted 23. April 2003 16:37
Chris Langan wrote quote:
My point, of course, was that one can establish truth in nature by mathematical as well as scientific means. For example, in order to prove that 2+2=4 in nature, one doesn't need to run an experiment in which one puts two marbles in an empty glass jar, peers inside, adds two more and then runs a final count. One can simply use arithmetic and count on nature (pun intended) to follow suit.
Aye, but there's the rub: Why should we "count on nature to follow suit"? That is, how do we know that the arithmetic operation of addition parallels what would happen if we did the 'peering into the jar' exercise? In that case, it seems intuitively obvious that nature would follow suit. But that's not guaranteed; one does experiments or field studies to test mathematical models precisely because one cannot count on nature to necessarily follow suit.
That nature may not follow suit is not necessarily a failing of mathematics in itself, let me hasten to add. It most often occurs because the particular mathematics used as a model is not veridically mapped onto nature. For example, if instead of simple addition I used the subtraction operation in the arithmetic model but dumped two more marbles into the jar in the 'natural' operation, the outcome of the math operation would not veridically map the change of state from two marbles to four marbles in the jar. A math model is useful just to the extent that its terms and operators faithfully map the entities, processes, and transformational phenomena in nature. That a model is mathematical says nothing whatsoever about its utility, veridicality, or ability to establish truth in its representation of nature. That's a matter for empirical testing, not logic or math. That's why one does science, not just thinks about it in the abstract.
RBH
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RBH
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posted 23. April 2003 17:08
Another thought while walking the dogs:
Let me push the thought above a little further, and in the process of doing so provide vindication for Gedanken's allegedly 'kindergarten' analysis. In Langan's marbles in a jar example, and sticking just to simple arithmetic, there are four arithmetic operators that we might use to map the operation of dumping two marbles into a jar already containing two marbles: addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. We can construct four mathematical models of that piece of nature:
2 + 2 = 4
2 - 2 = 0
2 / 2 = 1
2 * 2 = 4
If we do the experiment, dumping the two marbles into the jar already holding two marbles and then peering in and counting the marbles, we find that the results of two of our models map onto the number of marbles in the jar: addition and multiplication. And we cannot distinguish between them in this situation - they are both consistent with the empirical situation. Only by doing further experiments for which the two models provide different predictions can we ascertain which operator, addition or multiplication, is appropriate for mapping onto the 'natural' operation 'dump X marbles into a jar that currently contains Y marbles."
Thus Gedanken's remarks about invisible pink magic pixies are entirely appropriate. Mere consistency with evidence does not imply truth. Neither does the fact that a model is mathematical imply that it is necessarily true. All four models above are mathematically true statements, two are consistent with the one datum, but only one will be found to be empirically valid on further experimentation. And one can demonstrate that general point about math models via the kindergarten exercise of counting marbles in a jar.
RBH
Edited to replace "valid" with "true" in the italicized phrase mathematically true in the second-to-last sentence.
[ 23. April 2003, 17:44: Message edited by: RBH ]
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