> >To: Lloyd Eby <leby@nova.umuc.edu>
> >From: kevin.wirth@accessone.com (Kevin Wirth)
> >Subject: Re: evolution evidence
(Snip)
> > And sadly enough, they have even taken this to such an extreme that
> > they feel it is their duty to
> > PUNISH those who fail to interpret the data along party lines.
Your point here is true, but not germane to the discussion at hand. The
question at hand is the relationship between data and theory (or story).
That some scientists misuse their power and punish their opponents is
genuinely objectionable and evidence of gross malfeasance, but it does not
go, one way or the other, to the question of the status of theories or
stories or the relationship between data and theory (story).
> What I said was that the
> DATA or the EVIDENCE is linked with speculative and imaginative STORIES.
> These are fantasies, and some of the best men in paleontology and other
> fields of science related to this issue readily admit it!
*All* scientific theories, without exception, are what you call
"speculative and imaginative STORIES" because all theories go beyond the
evidence for them. The link between evidence and theory is always an open
one in that the evidence or data *never* yields the theory as a deductive
consequence, *except in those very few cases where we have a fully
formalized system*, and no *natural* science (a science that purports to
tell us something about the natural-phenomenal world, as opposed to a
mathematical or logical system, which is a self-contained syntactic
system, having a semantic referent or import only upon interpretation) is
a fully formalized system.
You may indeed be right in claiming that the story (theory) of evolution
has too many gaps, leaps, and speculations. But gaps, leaps, and
speculations *in themselves* are not evidence of non-scientificness or
speciousness because *all* theories and stories have them. Moreover they
have them not because somebody has failed to fill in the gaps, but
because such gaps are *necessarily* part of any non-trivial theory.
> You
> have attempted, for whatever reason, to make my argument into something it
> never was.
Perhaps I've read too much into your argument. But, as I've thought over
it, I've concluded that you are indeed accepting or working with a
positivist understanding of science, and that is what I am protesting.
> >The bottom line here is that as long as we must rely on speculation, there
> is no compelling reason which REQUIRES us to adhere to evolution. Failing
> to make a distinction between evidence and the model of evolution is a
> serious error, but people do it all the time.
Yes and no. *All* scientific theories (or stories) do rely on
speculation, and thus all are always subject to revision and even
overthrow. The evidence (which is, in principle, always finite) never
REQUIRES any theoretical conclusion (in the sense of demanding
that conclusion as a logical requirement) because theories usually
contain universal assertions, or surrogates for them. I agree with you
that, as you say, the "distinction between evidence and the model of
evolution" needs to be kept. But that distinction is not as hard or
straight or clear or uncontroversial as you seem to suggest that it is. I
also agree with you that the evidence does not compel or require us to
adhere to evolution. But evidence *for* evolution is indeed evidence *for *
evolution (and that statement is not just a simple tautology). Evidence
is always open-ended in that it can always be interpreted in more than one
way.
Lloyd Eby
leby@nova.umuc.edu