On Wed, 15 Nov 1995 17:02:46 -0500 (EST) you wrote:
>ABSTRACT: Here is a long answer to Walter Remine's short assertion that
>Darwinism is unfalsifiable. Afterwards, I address some of Walter's
>specific rhetoric.
[...]
>Back to Popper. For now, I'll stick to my earlier claim:
>
>.... when Popper described [natural selection] as "unfalsifiable," he did
>not yet have the categories of "paradigm" and "research program" available
>to him. Those categories were later contributions of other philosophers
>of science. The language of Popper's "recantation" suggests to me that,
>over the intervening years, he had become aware of that category and its
>role in scientific thinking.
Popper must have been aware of both "paradigm" and "research program"
at the time he made his famous admission that Darwinism was
untestable. Firstly, Popper actually uses "research program" in the
admission:
"I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable
scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme-a possible
framework for testable scientific theories...Darwinism is not a
scientific theory but metaphysical. But its value for science as a
metaphysical research programme is very great, especially if it is
admitted that it may be criticized and improved upon. (Popper K.,
"Unended Quest", Fontana, Glasgow, 1976, Sunderland L.D., "Darwin's
Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems", Master Book Publishers: El
Cajon CA, Revised Edition, 1988, p29).
Secondly, as for "paradigm", Popper must have known about that in 1976
when he wrote the above, since Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions", which pioneered (?) the idea of paradigm shift, had its
*second* edition in 1970:
"Over twenty years ago Thomas Kuhn wrote a groundbreaking book called
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn T., "The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions", Second Edition, 1970)...Kuhn made the point
that many scientific discoveries come from people outside the
mainstream of the dominant theory (he called it a paradigm) currently
embraced by the scientific community. This is because, as outsiders,
they have not been trained merely to see the data in a certain way;
their perceptual grid or theoretical orientation is not so
unquestioned and accepted as to have embedded itself in the
subconscious level so that the data must be made to fit that
orientation." (Moreland J.P. ed., "The Creation Hypothesis",
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove: IL, 1994, p37).
Of course Popper is not the only Darwinist to confess that
Darwinism is untestable. For example:
"Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper described, one which
cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable
observation can be fitted in to it. It is thus "outside of empirical
science" but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which
to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory
experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems, have attained
currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an
evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training."
(Ehrlich P. and Birch L.C., 'Evolutionary history and population
biology',
Nature, vol. 214, 22 April 1967, p352).
God bless.
Stephen
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