> I have no intention of defending Platonism. It provides a framework
> for interpreting data, just as darwinism does. To progress in
> science, we need to be able to see how our conceptual frameworks
> influence our thinking about the interpretation of data. I have
> sought to point out above how darwinism has this subtle effect. What
> many darwinists seem content to do is to develop their position by
> force of logic: "the world must be like this because these are the
> rules of biology". The scientific approach IMO identifies the
> different approaches and seeks out ways of testing alternatives.
> Darwinism has singularly failed to do this, and I look forward to the
> day when this situation changes.
Two points:
Again, you seem to indicate that logical reasoning is or should be foreign to
science. In point of fact, science is as strongly based on
deductive/inductive reasoning as it is on empirical evidence. The point of
view that you seem to be espousing is called empirical literalism -- read
nature directly, believe what you see and assume or reason nothing about it
or into it that cannot be directly supported by empirical evidence. The
problem with this, however, is that naive empirical literalism cannot
adequately explain a universe as complex as ours, especially when a fair
amount of information is in one form or another missing. Modern science is
actually based on a combination of empirical research and inferential
reasoning: use empirical evidence to establish the facts as far as you can,
then use reasoning and inference to fill in the gaps. Whenever possible this
inferential reasoning should be tested, but as long as it is strongly based
on the available empirical evidence, the inferential reasoning is then
theoretical, not speculative as you seem to imply, and as such can be
accepted as reality.
Before you go making blanket statements like those in the above paragraph,
you might want to read the latest edition of Futuyma's _Evolutionary
Biology_. Even the rather old edition I have (1979) contains many examples
of direct empirical testing of "Darwinism" and other evolutionary
alternatives. I understand how much you want to believe that "Darwinism" has
somehow failed in scientific methodology, but that simply isn't true, and the
more you stubbornly refuse to learn the truth, the more isolated you will
become from those evolutionary scientists who might find your skepticism
beneficial.
Kevin L. O'Brien