Scientific testing of a theory does not just mean laboratory controlled experiments.
It also means careful observation of such things as the fossil record, current genetic content of various species, and field studies of current ecological systems.
When the original poster specifically mentioned experiments, then experiments are fair game. Read the quoted text. As far as observational science goes, the fossil record provides an extremely fragmentary, internally inconsistent, and generally unhelpful view. It is reasonably well accepted (except by idiots^W americans) that this in itself does not deny evolution, it merely doesn't support it very well.
If we come to try and make judgements about long-time-scale dynamic processes from point observations, we fall into the trap of blind inductionism. And that's not (good) science.
Evolution is sufficently poorly characterised that it isn't very good at making predictions, and there aren't many new observations to test them on, so that trivial view of hypothesis doesn't work too well either.
The point is that it is possible to treat singular historical events scientifically. There isn't anything "borderline" about it, anymore than there is something "borderline" about scientific cosmology.
Popper would disagree. How can a singular event be falsifiable? It's the grue/bleen problem all over again. If you're denying this, what account of science are you using?
You can prove gravity exists. Drop something. It is accelerated towards the center of the earth.
And that's where you've made your first mistake. You've demonstrated that the principle you describe as gravity causes something to happen under a single set of conditions. This isn't a proof, there is no set of deductions from knowledge, and you don't even have enough points for an inductive conclusion (which isn't proof either)
They might argue about how it works, but no sane person would try to deny that there is such a thing.
And yet noone with a grasp of scientific history should go around crowing that we 'know' it works. People are inventing invisible matter and energy to try and overcome places where it doesn't work, and you think that's fine? You can't say what 'this sort of thing' is, definitively, but you insist that anyone who denies it is insane?
Pre-newton, it was argued that things just "belonged down," and without a better theory, that's what was accepted.)
And after Newton we had 'things belong together', which the 'down' is merely a special case of, due to perspective. Newton himself was quite candid about his inability to explain any of his findings.
Take Newton's Laws of Motion. They're wrong. Oops. What do we do now? What happened to those 'Laws'?
I argue that evolution is in the same phase. It's definitely there, there's big arguments about exactly how it works, and there's lots of experiments being run to learn more about it.
Unfortunately, this is where you're wrong. Because evolution is all about rationalising what hs already happened, we are completely unable to perform (in reasonable time) controlled experiments to check any of it. Ergo, the ability for it to make falsifiable predictions is limited making it really only borderline scientific.
Yes, it's a useful perspective, yes, the Linnean classificationists get warm fuzzies, but 'scientific' might be a touch strong.
Um, and yet it is still called a theory? It is called the law of gravity for a reason. It's provable.
Provable? Really? Then you'd better run out and talk to some people in Physics departments, because they've been trying to figure out where it comes from for quite some time now.
It is unfortunately the case that between popular accounts, common misuse, and different schools, words such as Law, Theory, Fact etc have become effectively content-free. Let's not even get into Proof. That's centuries dead in science.
Of course, anyone with a little sense of history might have a thoughtful expression as they try to remember the nuances of the various LISP equality operators.
One of them, eq, was exactly what was described here. Of course, given that the USPTO don't feel that they're in the business of digging out prior art, preferring instead to let their friends in the courts profit from the resulting mess.
I'd say that the franchise panorama of a community fragmened into self-contained branded enclaves in Snow Crash is as dystopian as the (sometime implicit) corporate ownership of the world inThe Diamond Age.
I agree that there are levels of dysfunction in dystopian writings, but in only the most extreme and artificial examples will the ability of the average grey person to exist in some fairly mindless fashion. In conclusion, I think they're both valid examples.
Looking through the original source article in Popular Science and looking through the article, it all looks pretty depressing. Of course, purely from my own experience, I know that there is a great deal of new and interesting SF coming out, primarily set in a near-future dystpia.
From Morgan to Stephenson to Gibson or Macleod, the world's current condition spawns a quite wide variety of near-future dyspotian visions. This might well be a statement of the perception of now. Even reasonable fantasy is increasing grim and morally ambiguous, Parker and Martin and Erikson are all perfect example of these with recent or upcoming books.
Back to the article though, the idea that the world has been disillusioned due to the disparity of 3 years ago and 2001 the movie is laughable. The other 'fact' of decreasing magazine subscriptions is obviously a feature of decreasing literacy rates, and sound-bite attention spans. Magazines in general have seen decreasing circulations, even the ones that aren't mainly pictures.
In short, the article is has shaky foundations, wild conclusions, and strikes me of only having relevance on slashdot so the similarly patterened 'Apple is Dead' articles can have some company. Of course, Apple isn't dead either.
And as for nostalgic? WTF did an ultra 5 become nostalgic?
What you're forgetting here is that this is now a world filled with PC-using linux weenies who consider any computer older than about 3 months to be worthless trash. Presumably a few of them will pass through this phase and learn about the increasingly small number of sensible machines which still stack up well after half a decade or more.
For those people who aren't old enough to know there is a difference, the Sparc 5 was the baby brother of Sun's Sparc 20, and was a sun4m machine. The Ultra 5 discussed in the article was a much later beast, with a sun4u architecture, and crippled horribly with various PC-isms including IDE and sharp case edges.
As far as their being useless, I bought one just recently for one of my students to use as a workstation to work on visualising the results of the modelling work that will be done in the coming year. For next to no money you can pick up a decent workstation that runs Solaris, often with a fantastic monitor. Outdated, Ha!
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When the original poster specifically mentioned experiments, then experiments are fair game. Read the quoted text. As far as observational science goes, the fossil record provides an extremely fragmentary, internally inconsistent, and generally unhelpful view. It is reasonably well accepted (except by idiots^W americans) that this in itself does not deny evolution, it merely doesn't support it very well.
If we come to try and make judgements about long-time-scale dynamic processes from point observations, we fall into the trap of blind inductionism. And that's not (good) science.
Evolution is sufficently poorly characterised that it isn't very good at making predictions, and there aren't many new observations to test them on, so that trivial view of hypothesis doesn't work too well either.
Popper would disagree. How can a singular event be falsifiable? It's the grue/bleen problem all over again. If you're denying this, what account of science are you using?
And that's where you've made your first mistake. You've demonstrated that the principle you describe as gravity causes something to happen under a single set of conditions. This isn't a proof, there is no set of deductions from knowledge, and you don't even have enough points for an inductive conclusion (which isn't proof either)
And yet noone with a grasp of scientific history should go around crowing that we 'know' it works. People are inventing invisible matter and energy to try and overcome places where it doesn't work, and you think that's fine? You can't say what 'this sort of thing' is, definitively, but you insist that anyone who denies it is insane?
And after Newton we had 'things belong together', which the 'down' is merely a special case of, due to perspective. Newton himself was quite candid about his inability to explain any of his findings.
Take Newton's Laws of Motion. They're wrong. Oops. What do we do now? What happened to those 'Laws'?
Unfortunately, this is where you're wrong. Because evolution is all about rationalising what hs already happened, we are completely unable to perform (in reasonable time) controlled experiments to check any of it. Ergo, the ability for it to make falsifiable predictions is limited making it really only borderline scientific.
Yes, it's a useful perspective, yes, the Linnean classificationists get warm fuzzies, but 'scientific' might be a touch strong.
Provable? Really? Then you'd better run out and talk to some people in Physics departments, because they've been trying to figure out where it comes from for quite some time now.
It is unfortunately the case that between popular accounts, common misuse, and different schools, words such as Law, Theory, Fact etc have become effectively content-free. Let's not even get into Proof. That's centuries dead in science.
Of course, anyone with a little sense of history might have a thoughtful expression as they try to remember the nuances of the various LISP equality operators.
One of them, eq, was exactly what was described here. Of course, given that the USPTO don't feel that they're in the business of digging out prior art, preferring instead to let their friends in the courts profit from the resulting mess.
Madness.
I'd say that the franchise panorama of a community fragmened into self-contained branded enclaves in Snow Crash is as dystopian as the (sometime implicit) corporate ownership of the world inThe Diamond Age.
I agree that there are levels of dysfunction in dystopian writings, but in only the most extreme and artificial examples will the ability of the average grey person to exist in some fairly mindless fashion. In conclusion, I think they're both valid examples.
Looking through the original source article in Popular Science and looking through the article, it all looks pretty depressing. Of course, purely from my own experience, I know that there is a great deal of new and interesting SF coming out, primarily set in a near-future dystpia.
From Morgan to Stephenson to Gibson or Macleod, the world's current condition spawns a quite wide variety of near-future dyspotian visions. This might well be a statement of the perception of now. Even reasonable fantasy is increasing grim and morally ambiguous, Parker and Martin and Erikson are all perfect example of these with recent or upcoming books.
Back to the article though, the idea that the world has been disillusioned due to the disparity of 3 years ago and 2001 the movie is laughable. The other 'fact' of decreasing magazine subscriptions is obviously a feature of decreasing literacy rates, and sound-bite attention spans. Magazines in general have seen decreasing circulations, even the ones that aren't mainly pictures.
In short, the article is has shaky foundations, wild conclusions, and strikes me of only having relevance on slashdot so the similarly patterened 'Apple is Dead' articles can have some company. Of course, Apple isn't dead either.
What you're forgetting here is that this is now a world filled with PC-using linux weenies who consider any computer older than about 3 months to be worthless trash. Presumably a few of them will pass through this phase and learn about the increasingly small number of sensible machines which still stack up well after half a decade or more.
--
For those people who aren't old enough to know there is a difference, the Sparc 5 was the baby brother of Sun's Sparc 20, and was a sun4m machine. The Ultra 5 discussed in the article was a much later beast, with a sun4u architecture, and crippled horribly with various PC-isms including IDE and sharp case edges.
As far as their being useless, I bought one just recently for one of my students to use as a workstation to work on visualising the results of the modelling work that will be done in the coming year. For next to no money you can pick up a decent workstation that runs Solaris, often with a fantastic monitor. Outdated, Ha!