N.Wells
Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (GaryGaulin @ July 13 2015,18:56) | | Quote (Jim_Wynne @ July 13 2015,10:13) | | Quote (GaryGaulin @ July 12 2015,23:06) | | Since either word works just fine (though scientific theories are supposed to have a short "premise" like that) I often use both, so that there is no conflict with what Casey has said. |
Can you refer us to a published "scientific theory" that complies with what you imagine to be the formatting rules for them? Can you tell us about the generally accepted structure with published examples? |
A search for "The premise of Darwin's theory of evolution" finds many like this:
| Quote | Darwin's theory of evolution
The premise of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is that all life, from mammals to single celled organisms, is related through descent with modification from common ancestral stock.
https://www.open.ac.uk/darwin.....ory.php
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Just insert the unnecessary "[premise of the]" and we get the same thing but for a theory to explain how "intelligent cause" works:
| Quote | | The [premise of the] theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. |
It's actually a very simple K-12 level concept, pertaining to the very basics of how science works. |
That's actually a very bad use of the word "premise", albeit not an uncommon one, and you are right that it's unnecessary in either sentence, so it's not an example of good science in action. The premise of an argument is the assumptions or propositions assumed to be true for the sake of the argument or the investigation. Hypotheses have premises, in fact they are premises that are about to be tested. Theories should have as few premises (assumptions) as possible, because a theory is not an hypothesis posed for the purpose of testing but a proposed explanation that has already passed some critical tests and garnered some support. We are supposed to propose as many hypotheses as possible (multiple working hypotheses), so most of them should fail, usually because their premises turn out to be wrong on closer investigation. In fact, most are expected to fail because one of the roles of hypothesis testing is to rule things out (for instance, to test out premises in anticipation of creating a theory). In contrast, although we are never done testing theories, a theory is proposed as a candidate for the best available explanation, so having a theory fail is an indication that the proposers of the theory didn't do their work properly. We have no business formally proposing or accepting a theory until we have some pretty strong evidence from a series of connected hypotheses that have passed their tests that our overall idea is supportable.
So with respect to the theory of evolution, you want the idea that all life is related by common descent to be a conclusion or an implication, not a premise, or else you risk arriving at your desired conclusions simply by failing to test your assumptions.
As a concise summary of Darwin's theory of evolution, a statement that "Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection says that all life, from mammals to single celled organisms, is related through descent with modification from common ancestral stock" fails in that it doesn't say anything about natural selection. Other than that, it is not too bad.
Although imperfect, it is far better than the statement that "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." First, "all" and "through descent with modification" are explicit and unambiguous. In contrast, "some" is completely lacking in specificity, and "by an intelligent cause" is deceptive, dishonest, and incomplete. The statement is trivially true: beaver dams and the Mona Lisa are clearly the result of intelligence, but otherwise it explains nothing, and that is clearly not what IDists want to imply by "intelligent cause". A good summary of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection would have explained how natural selection operates: this is easily doable as the process is well known and well documented. In contrast, IDists (you included) haven't shown any ability at all to explain how intelligence is supposed to cause things.
FWIW, Darwin used the word "premise" extensively, but in the alternate sense of "Before going any farther, I should mention...."
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