----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel Z Bandstra" <bandstra@ese.ogi.edu> wrote:
> Glenn's post below reminds me of a question that rolls around in my head
> from time to time. Some might argue that there's a lot of room for
rolling
> around in there so maybe that's where this question comes from!
>
> Can a scientific theory be developed based primarily on explaining what
> happened or must it develop by making hard predictions about what will
> happen (in a given experimental set up) and then testing those
predictions?
> I guess I'm thinking that coming up with a plausible history of things is
> not really science but rather an activity that may (or may not) use
science
> as a tool
Even historical sciences make predictions. They make predictions about the
kind of things that can be found. For instance, in the early 1900s Alfred
Wegner claimed that the continents had moved apart and were once joined
together. That makes certain predictions about what one will find when
looking at the geologic data. One should expect that animals could have
walked across areas now separated by ocean because the ocean wasn't there.
So you should expect similar fossils on continents now widely separated.
One should expect to find that the sediments on one shore will match the
sediments on the other shore of the ocean. When people went looking for
these items, that is what they found.
In anthro, if Neanderthal is the same species as Homo sapiens you should
eventually be able to find examples of hybridization. People did find one.
That too is a prediction. So, historical sciences do make predictions about
what will be found in the future, just as physics theories predict what will
be found in the future.
And this is precisely what ID fails to do--make predictions. They don't want
to play by the rules of science, yet they want to be taken seriously as
scientists.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Mar 20 2000 - 22:26:16 EST