>Brian wrote
>
> 4. Thus, *all* experts agree on "the fact of evolution."
>>
>>Just out of curiosity, what do you consider to be the
>>"the fact of evolution" as opposed to the "the theory of
>>evolution"?
>>
>>Here's a nice analogy to consider. Would it bother
>>you at all to know that even though plasticity in metals
>>is a well established empirical phenomena and there are
>>many mechanisms that have been proposed to explain it,
>>there is still no general theory of plasticity capable
>>of predicting the behavior? Nevertheless, the fact that
>>metals display plastic behavior is still a fact. I assure
>>of this with the authority that only a High Priest could
>>muster. But you probably don't care, right?
>
>Although true that many facts are unexplainable, the explanation of the
>origin of life is a bit different since it is not observable like the
>plasticity of metals. That's why people like me get irritated when the
>priests of naturalistic evolution keep saying the mantra "evolution is a
>fact" when it is only microevolution that is an established (and also
>observable fact).
>
First of all, you are mixing two different subjects (abiogenesis
and biological evolution) in the same paragraph. Abiogenesis is
a speculative subject and is admitted as such in the primary
literature. Quite often one will find evolutionist fundamentalists
(say on t.o) who are not familiar with the primary literature
making grandiose claims about the "facthood" of abiogenesis.
I spent a considerable amount of time and energy arguing against
this some time ago. This is yet one more example of how one can
be led astray by popularizations. The immense problems faced by
OOL research are not a secret, they are right there spelled out
in the literature.
Now, back to my question. I did not intend this as being some
kind of trick or rhetorical question. I really am interested
in how people tend to delineate between fact and theory. I
think this is a key point for understanding evolution and
how science works.
Since I am primarily an experimentalist I tend to view facts
as analogous to experimental data, or observations if you
will. There is tremendous evidence that macro-evolution has
occurred. I doubt any PC's would deny this and I'm sure also
that PJ doesn't deny it. In this sense then macro-evolution
is a fact. The real question is whether there is a theory
of evolution incorporating known, well characterized and
understood physical mechanisms which can account for this fact.
In my opinion, the opinion of a layman BTW :), a theory
of this type is not currently available.
This is where my analogy comes in. I think its very good,
actually, so don't go pooh poohing it ;-). I could even
extend it somewhat. There are theories of plasticity that
work quite well under very specialized conditions such
as proportional loading. Attempts at extrapolating these
to more general cases always fail. This we could take
as analogous to micro-evolution and its attempted
extrapolation to macro-evolution.
So, now I have to ask, do you also get irritated when the
priests of naturalistic plasticity keep saying the mantra
"plasticity is a fact" when it is only plasticity under
proportional loading conditions that can be explained
by physical theory? This next one would be more for
Steve Jones, does this failure of naturalistic science
provide evidence of intelligent causation in non-proportional
loading of metals?
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Brian Harper | "I can't take my guesses back
Associate Professor | That I based on almost facts
Applied Mechanics | That ain't necessarily so"
Ohio State University | -- Willie Nelson
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