Theory Choice

Resha - I think religeon and science are at times much closer than each would care to admit.

I would agree ... and others would strongly disagree. That's why I think it would be an interesting subject to study.

But, my fear is that evolutionsts have nothing to gain and everything to lose by such a study, so they wouldn't support it. And, if the idea were taken up by anti-evolutionists, it would suffer from lack of credibility.

How does one empirically go about studying the two and coming to the conclusion they are not separate systems?

That wouldn't be the point. I was simply saying I agreed with the statement.

The point of the survey would be to determine several different things. The first of those would be: what is the relative importance of the various types of evidence?

That question depends somewhat on how evolution is defined - I've seen some starkly different definitions from reputable evolutionary biologists. But I think I could get around that issue.

So, for example, do scientists feel genetics alone proves evolution? Or taxonomy alone? or paleontology alone? Or is it some combination?

I would challenge anyone to produce a workable scheme to answer those questions. But, again, I don't think I'd need it for the survey I have in mind. Instead, I would use something I've used at work called AHP (Analytical Hierarchical Processing).

Resha - One possibility not mentioned is chemistry. There are an awful lot of reactions possible in chemistry and some of the products might be more favourable in some circumstances. It would be unreasonable if the opportunity was presented for these reactions not to take place. However, in some religions (not yours of course) an all powerful god could stymie chemical processes so chemistry may not be acceptable as proof to everybody.

I do not think many biologists are swayed by political pressure to pick different theories over another. Faith definitely sways people though.

Sure. My list was not exhaustive. I would simply be curious to know a Pareto of the various pieces of the evolutionary puzzle.

To be honest, I'd also like to know what Popperian falsification test (if any) would ever be persuasive to evolutionists. Personally, I don't think anything would ever pursuade them. Evolution happens to be the subject of the day. So, to be fair, I'll add that it seems falsification is rarely considered in any branch of science.

Let me clarify what I mean by "politics". I don't mean government officials or popular sentiment. I mean the dynamics of the scientific community itself.

And I'll give you a chance to reconsider your statement after you check out Stephen Jay Gould. I'm sure Gould remained a firm believer in evolution throughout his life, but politics undoubtedly caused him to backpedal from several statements he made challenging specific evolutionary theories (challenging Mayr got him the most vitriol).

Why not conduct your study in the anti-evoutionary community? I suspect the results would be more clear.

Science by its very nature attempts a complete description of the natural world even though its various branches investigate different parts of it.
In the case of the general theory of evolution, the theory is confirmed (or at least not UN-confirmed) by different branches: microbiology, genetics, paleontology, biology, etc.,etc..
Should a serious investigation by one specialised area of study raise questions about evolution, or present significant data that could not be explained by it, the challenge would be investigated; if, for example, carbon dating would find evidence that dinosaurs existed at the same time as early man.

Pure science, again by its very nature, attempts an objective (non-religious, non-political) description of natural data, and looks for patterns that allow for prediction (theories and laws). If one is going to suggest that political pressure somehow shapes their investigation, one should be able to point to specific examples. It would seem more likely that political agendas (and those from the pulpit) present un-scientific interpretations of science in the form of propaganda or suppress unfavourable evidence and theories, than that science itself participates in such intellectual violence.
Remember, too, that science is a form of public knowledge, and even if the public is limited to international peer review (and the egocentric human desire to disprove another's theory), it would seem unlikely that theories could be swayed by outside influences.
Again, one has only to look at Marxian science under the thumb of a philosophic/political agenda, to realise how unfruitful biased science can be. What progress Russian science made was dependent on the work of independent science from the outside world.

And the methodology and review process are transparent. Big frauds get caught almost immediately. Look at that Korean scientist who made false claims about cloning. Look at the Piltdown Man. People seldom even get away with a single episode of fraud -- and since peer-reviewed evidence that supports evolution numbers in the hundreds of thousands of scientific publications, the likelihood of some sort of conspiracy is negligible.

And same with the political pressure that the Bush administration has put on scientists, esp regarding environmental science and reproductive health. It channels funding away from fruitful research, it creates rebellions among scientists, and it makes the politically supported research unproductive.

I'd further ask where the political pressure might come from for evolutionary science. I mean we haven't had a TRULY liberal president in the 40 years since Lyndon Johnson, and everyone since then has been a huge panderer to the religious right. And yet the most productive evolutionary biology research happened under the Reagan administration (no thanks to Reagan himself). It was in the 1980s that they developed PCR, which revolutionized molcular genetics research.

A better discussion would be Ptolemy vs. Newton. The difference between Newton and Copernicus / Galileo is that Newton provided an observation-based mathematical model that not only explained a heliocentric universe, but also accounted for the periodicity and movement of the different celestial bodies.

I do not think this is true at all. The thing is that if you're a scientist and you think you've discovered something that will change a paradigm, then your evidence needs to be exceptionally strong. Scientists, more than anything else, are skeptical in the absence of evidence.

You can't possibly believe this, can you? A scientific theory is one that is formulated based on evidence. Creationism a priori assumes creation and then looks for supportive evidence -- it's anti-scientific. It's not a theory, so there's nothing to choose. Scientific explanations are rooted in evidence. Creationism and intelligent design are NOT rooted in evidence.

I don't think such a study can be done in a way that would truly answer your question.

But the thing is, it doesn't matter anyway!!! All that matters is the underlying evidence. And even if someone feels political/social pressure to accept an overarching theory, they can always go back and look at the evidence to decide if that conclusion is merited.

I'd bet you that people in religious circles are FAR more influenced by their social / religious / political context to accept creation and reject evolution without critically looking at the sources of each explanation. Why? Because you don't have access to Science and Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences when you're sitting in church.

First of all, when molecular genetics, population genetics, and paleontology ALL mutually support one another, then it would be a sheer contrivance to force people to pick one.

Secondly, evolution (over the short term) is easily demonstrable (I see it every single day in my patients who develop drug-resistant bacteria in the face of antibiotic pressure), so all that REALLY remains controversial is the origin of life.

Thirdly, taxonomy is not really a science unto itself -- it was at the time of Linnaeus, but no longer. Taxonomy is based upon the best tools we have to describe relationships between organisms. It was once morphology, but it is now molecular phylogeny.

Why don't we all agree with the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, who could happily reconcile evolutionary biology and deeply held Christian beliefs? I'm am not wildly impressed with people like Dawkins and Dennett, those who think that evolutionary biology can answer metaphysical questions, for this brings science into disrepute, but surely the whole evolutionary bandwagon cannot be a politically driven conspiracy.

It would be impossible for a scientist to prove a belief false if it isn't, or true if it isn't, so whatever our religious beliefs we can just ignore the natural sciences unless we're interested. If we believe a religious doctrine is true then we must also believe that scientists could one day prove it is true but can never prove it is false. Why worry?

The discussion so far has confirmed two of my concerns. My first concern was that the survey I proposed would always lie under a suspicion of bias. The second concern was that it would be continually confused with efforts to justify the truth/falsity of evolution.

My idea was more of a sociological interest. As I said, I could try the same survey within my own discipline. There I fear it would die from neglect. I picked evolution as a contrasting field, where it likely would be murdered by zealots. (Please, no one take that personally. I just felt like waxing a bit poetic.)

If I mounted a massive education campaign to accompany the survey, I might succeed.

This forum played an important part in educating me in the philosophy of science, so I wanted to gather some opinions on my idea. Thanks for the thoughts everyone gave.

The other issues raised are tangent to my intent, but if there is an interest in discussing them, I'm game.

Resha,

You've approached this with a hypothesis that scientists choose to believe things based not on evidence, but on political pressure within their field.

But even if you're able to demonstrate such political pressure, you're still not negating the evidence basis behind whether certain theories are accepted or not. As I said above, whether or not there is political pressure does not negate a scientist's ability to look at the existing evidence and make an independent decision.

You could be right. I won't deny that your point may hold in certain cases, but whether it does or doesn't is conjecture unless we have some data to study the matter.

There seems to be a strong reliance on the idea of "washing out the priors", i.e. that in time error and deliberate misrepresentation will be overcome by the weight of "reality". As good as it sounds, it is largely an idea without proof that rests on a realist interpretation of science. I used to be a realist myself, but have made a dramatic shift away from that perspective in the last few years. I don't know that my view has a neat, succinct label, but I find myself agreeing with the instrumentalists a lot.

P.S. Maybe I should say something other than "political pressure", because that always leads people to think of school boards mandating the teaching of creationism. That is not what I meant. I had in mind two things: 1) primarily I was thinking of what might better be called "peer pressure". Examples of what I mean are cited in The Fire in the Equations. But 2) (and more subtle) are those biases of which we are unaware. As an example, our "natural" experiences seem to bias us against quantum physics, where things such as Schrodinger's cat (or wave/particle duality) are counterintuitive. Those are the ones we know about. We can't know if we may be unaware of others (which means my survey idea wouldn't capture them).

If there is any extrinsic pressure in science, it's funding. People study things that they can get grants to study. To a very large degree this is merit-based, so someone will be more likely to get funding if they have a sound, feasible research proposal and if they have a record of productivity.

That said, I know some good researchers who have begun studying bioterrorism simply because Bush threw money at it, even though smallpox and tularemia don't remotely deserve the amount of funding that other diseases do.

Since grant committees are mainly made up of scientists, this can be a form of peer pressure. That said, it's not peer pressure that would (for instance) prevent someone from trying to study creation. The problem is that it would be nearly impossible to come up with a legitimate research proposal that is based on a Biblical presupposition.

Evolution research never sets out to do something as grandiose as to support or deny evolution. The questions are far more microscopic. Even a tremendous world famous evolution researcher like Thomas Cavalier-Smith is doing studies that look at sequence variation in conserved 16S ribosomal rRNA sequences. Any established theory is built on a mountain of microscopic, reductionist research. An alternative theory would need to establish evidence first and a theory second.

You are definitely right about the pressure that can be applied by controling purse strings.

The reductionism that you mention is an interesting topic, but not one I have spent much time on yet. A few papers on reductionism (not related to the context of evolution that you used) are up next on my reading list.



This is an interesting statement. I would agree this is how it happens in the real world. It has forced upon me a certain disingenuous approach in my own work. I must sometimes use the scraps that fall from the table to do some independent experimenting. Then, once I am convinced I have a plausible theory, I propose it for full funding.

It creates a real conumdrum. One won't be given money for random data gathering. So how does one obtain evidence first and a theory second, unless by a somewhat subversive technique?

I have also used "data mining" techniques, where I use old data taken for other purposes and try to extract hints to support a new idea. But it is a tough task. "Data" is rarely neutral, as ideal views of scientific method assume. Rather, due to limited funding, it is narrowly focused on the task for which it was taken. As such, mining old data requires a bit of creativity.

I would never take your suggested course of action if I had my ideal world. I hope you would agree. Yet since that is how real life works, I think science tends to become institutionalized and (albeit unintentionally) stifles new ideas.

I reached a point with one of my theories where I needed significant support to take the next step. I have yet to get that support. I have been told I would have to leave my job and take it up as a doctoral dissertation - I can't convince my university colleagues to take it on by themselves - no funding.

Sorry, I had to attend to something else before I could address one of your other points.



You earlier spoke to my comment on the "noise" created by creationism. I do believe God created the universe. I don't try to hide that. But the distinction I make is that I don't see science as the means to explore that belief. In fact, I don't think science will ever be successful in discovering our origins, even if God is excluded from the equation. I think it a waste of money, and wish I had a mere tenth of the money used on such programs for my own work.

I don't take the accomodationist view of some NOMA (as Whoever suggested). I say science can't answer questions about origins (and even some of the sweeping statements made about evolution).

Whether we would agree on evolution itself depends on your definition. There is the minimalist definition of people like Laurence Moran (What is Evolution?), where evolution is merely a synonym for genetics. Then there is the all-encompassing definition of people like Roy Caldwell (Evolution 101: An Introduction to Evolution).

If all one takes evolution to mean is the completely neutral "change happens", then, yes, there is strong evidential support. In one sense I admire those who retreat to this position, acknowledging it as the only one that can be solidly defended. In another sense, I find it a bit devious, as it shrinks from asking the obvious questions that attend change.

This is what I hinted at in my comment about creationism. Several ideas can be posited after accepting that change happens, but it seems only one is ever considered, because biologists spend so much time trying to discredit creationism. It is almost as if they fear that admitting other ideas could be studied would concede the bloody ground they have fought to defend.

I hope you don't deny that in Darwin's time "evolution" had a positivist (or maybe progressivist is a better word) spin to it. The idea was that one species changed into a "better" species.

Evolutionists now try to hold a morally neutral position. It is not that the new species is better, but it is simply the one that survived. But why do they feel compelled to say that? I think the evolution/creation debate pressured them into it. Maybe morally neutral is wrong. Maybe the universe does point in a specific direction, and species do get "better". I don't believe that, but it is a possibility, and it highlights that there are other possibilities.

Even in the morally neutral evolution of today, biologists are making a judgement. I don't fault them for that. I wish scientists would admit that they make judgements. The judgement is that evolution favors survival. This may seem obvious (a kind of "it just is" realist position), but it also may not be true. The fact that life existed in the past and exists now does not mean it will exist in the future. Maybe mutation, on the whole, is destructive, and life is winding down toward a deadly end. Or maybe change is periodic within the bounds of some nonlinear limit cycle, and we have not yet seen the extent of that cycle.

I don't think science has the capacity to prove one of these over the other.

Well, you start with a hypothesis, right? And you propose an investigation of that hypothesis. That hypothesis might be well established by other approaches, and you're trying to corroborate those with a new technique. Or the hypothesis might be very novel.

Yes, it's always problematic when the data analysis is done with outcomes in mind unrelated to the initial method. On the other hand, sometimes it's the best you've got, it's much more feasible, and you can generate much bigger numbers. I am doing some projects that involve record reviews. Of course you still need to have a consistent and well defined method a priori.

There is prospective exploratory research that is not really hypothesis-driven. Look at dinosaur digs, or watching space through telescopes, or the human genome project.



As for your above post, I think you have a very healthy take on what the respective 'jobs' of science and faith are in our 1) epistemology and 2) self-identity and outlook. They're not mutually exclusive, because they don't speak the same language. And for people to force one to speak the other's language in order to exclude the other is a false dichotomy in my book -- and that's true whatever I believe or don't believe.