N.Wells
Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (GaryGaulin @ June 26 2015,21:30) | | |
Yes, that's leading to an allied term, not "this is a synonym". If you doubt that, read the actual entries. To qualify as a scientific theory, a proposed theory has to be potentially falsifiable. In other words it has to be potentially capable of being falsified, otherwise (like your pile of dreck) it's no better than mental masturbation. If it survives tests that are potentially capable of falsifying it, then it has survived to the next round of testing and is still, at least for now, a viable theory. If it fails one of the tests, then it has been falsified, so it is wrong and it is no longer a viable theory. If there was no way it could fail a test and be falsified then it was never serious science in the first place.
Much of evolutionary theory could potentially be falsified by any of the following: finding a strip of noncoding DNA (especially in all organisms) that translates to something like "Approved, Inspector #8, Rigel III", or finding a fossil rabbit in Precambrian strata, or finding a bird in the Devonian, or a Precambrian dinosaur, or Silurian grass, or a Mississippian magnolia. Sure, we would have to check that these were legitimate and not hoaxes or hideous errors, but evolutionary theory could not accommodate them if they were legitimate and properly dated (at least, not without time travel, and science would find it easier to toss evolutionary theory than accept time travel). Evolutionary theory could also be falsified by identical complex features showing up randomly in multiple different presumed lineages, the way improvements in engineering are immediately introduced across multiple lines of manufacture. If biochemistry had mapped randomly against comparative anatomy, with the greatest differences not between what were presumed from traditional biological studies to be the most distant relatives and the greatest similarities not in the closest relatives, then evolutionary theory would be relegated to an also-ran in the history of ideas. Cats giving birth to dogs and dogs giving birth to chickens would do it. Being unable to find any evidence for any instances of natural selection would do in half of it (although not the genetic drift, recombination, mutation parts of it.
| Quote | Falsification may refer to:
The act of disproving a proposition, hypothesis, or theory: see Falsifiability |
Note how that differs from the falsifiability link:
| Quote | Falsifiability: Falsifiability or refutability of a statement, hypothesis, or theory is an inherent possibility to prove it to be false. A statement is called falsifiable if it is possible to conceive an observation or an argument which proves the statement in question to be false. .... Some philosophers argue that science must be falsifiable.
.........
Popper stresses the problem of demarcation—distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific—and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience. The question is epitomized in the famous saying of Wolfgang Pauli that if an argument fails to be scientific because it cannot be falsified by experiment, "it is not only not right, it is not even wrong!" |
But because you are an unfettered loon and can't admit to making a mistake, you are just going to pretend that there's no difference, aren't you? The ONLY person you are fooling here is yourself.
So, how is your bilgewater sufficiently potentially falsifiable to qualify as respectable science? What legitimate and logically valid tests of your not-a-theory can you propose?
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