On Thu, 27 Jul 1995 10:39:55 GMT you wrote:
DT>I don't think anyone is in a position to make predictions.
>However, the Basic Type analyses are throwing up many ideas on
>chromosome evolution and sources of variability which have been
>missed by evolutionary biologists - because they are working
>within a different paradigm.
I think this is a very important point. This is really the burden of
Denton's "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis". The paradigm has priority:
"Yet no matter how convincing such disproofs might appear, no matter
how
contradictory and unreal much of the Darwinian framework might now
seem
to anyone not committed to its defence philosophers of science like,
as
Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend have pointed out, it is impossible to falsify
theories by reference to the facts or indeed by any sort of rational
or
empirical argument. The history of science amply testifies to what
Kuhne has termed the "priority of the paradigm" and provides many
fascinating examples of the extraordinary lengths to which members of
the scientific community will go to defend a theory just as long as it
holds sufficient intrinsic appeal." (Denton M., "Evolution: A Theory
in Crisis",1985, Burnett Books, p348)
[...]
DT>...I would suggest that
>we are struggling within an paradigm which has been defined and
>developed by neoDarwinians: because they have not seen this as
>an area of research interest, they have not developed tools to
>permit the serious study of limits to variation. This is a
>challenge to biologists who do recognise natural groupings in
>animals and plants: new tools need to be developed to quantify
>the observations.
Agreed. Research is directed to explain the world within the dominant
paradigm, which is evolutionary. To those of us not reared in the
Darwinist tradition, the evidence that is produced to support
evolution
seems just as easily understandable within a broad creationist
paradigm.
For example, Glenn believes Hampe's experiment in producing longer
bones in chickens is evidence that birds evolved from reptiles. He
even called the resulting leg a "Lizard leg". Within the evolutionary
paradigm it *is* a lizard leg. Within a creationist paradigm, it is
simply a modified chicken leg, and if anything, evidence for
intelligent
design. And so it goes on....! :-)
God bless.
Stephen
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