(Snip)
> >The DATA isn't the problem. Stop
> being so focused on the data. The problem is with HOW THE DATA IS
> MANIUPLATED INTO A STORY. I would contest your proposal simply on that
> basis. There is too much assumption. It's a misnomer folks, and please
> don't fall victim to this as Glenn obviously has, to perceive the DATA as
> EVIDENCE for evolution. It simply isn't the case. Why? Because (and this
> is where most of us get hoodwinked...) the evidence is linked together by
> assumptions. It cannot BE any other way!
I think that you unduly separate between evidence (data) and what you call
a story ("theory" would be a more accurate term). As numerous philosophers
of science -- Pierre Duhem, Karl Popper, Norwood Russell Hanson, Frederick
Suppe, Ernan McMullin -- have pointed out, facts (data) are theory-laden.
Popper gave a nice demonstration: Go into a lecture hall full of people
and command them, "Observe, and write what you observe." Will they be able
to comply with your order? No, unless you tell them *what* to observe. So
the notion that data (as you put it) is neatly separable from a story (as
you put it, again) is incorrect.
Think of the analogy of crime-solution or forensic investigation. Does the
detective just gather data? Of course not. Otherwise he'd take endless
pictures of the grass 20 feet away from the corpse, or of the roof
shingles of the house, or do endless chemical analysis of the leather in
the shoes, or whatever. Instead, he has a *theory* (probably tacit) that
guides his data-collection, and he collects data so as to confirm or
falsify that theory. (Crime and forensic invesigations are sufficiently
standardized -- there is a regnant theory -- that, in practice, certain
data is always deemed to be germane and is routinely collected.) Of
course, that theory is tentative and subject to change or even abandonment
as his investigation proceeds. But, apart from a theory, there is nothing
to guide the collection of data. Data is always data relative to a
theory, or a small number of competing theories.
There is no such thing as data in the abstract. Even the data coming from
the Hubble telescope -- a string of digital bits -- becomes meaningful as
data when someone has a theory or interpretaion by which this data is
organized into a theory (story). Otherwise it's just a string of bits, of
gobbledygook.
This notion that data and theory (or story) are separable was a central
tenet of positivism; it is now thoroughly discredited and no philosopher
of science, so far as I know, still holds it.
Lloyd Eby
leby@nova.umuc.edu