Chemical evolution:

[paddoboy]

If wikipedia is defining "evolution" to be "the major patterns of change" that are observed in the data (e.g. fossil record, DNA), then it's fine to call it a fact. But the "theory of evolution" is a theory that sets out to explain those major patterns of change.


Gould sounds a bit confused there, though I'd give him benefit of the doubt since its an out-of-context quote that you may have mangled.

No there's plenty more around the net, all reputable sources I have seen putting the theory of evolution as fact. I'm sure your IT skills are superior to mine.

If he says evolution is "a theory" and "also a fact", but also that "facts and theories are different things", then it can't really be both, can it?

Scientific theories are just that generally. As they keep matching data over the years they can grow in certainty, The theory of evolution is one that has gained factual status.

So, I'm left in a muddle as to what he means when he says evolution is both a theory and a fact. Maybe he was just having an off day when he wrote that.

Go do further checks yourself James if you doubt it.

If you say abiogenesis is a scientific theory of the emergence of life, please set out for me the basics of the theory.

What did I say James?
" Abiogenesis is the only scientific theory we have for the emergence of life. The exact methodology and pathway is though at time of writing unknown."

Wouldn't the whole point of a workable theory of abiogenesis be to provide an exact methodology and pathway?

Of course...That does not invalidate that Abiogenesis is the only scientific theory for the emergence of life though.
Unless you have another?

What I'm saying is that not everything is "you're with us or you're with the terrorists". Just because somebody is wrong about one thing, it doesn't mean they are wrong about everything. .

Did I say that? But by the same token he admitted even with evidence and a pathway, it would not change his literal belief in the bible. My criticism of him is his " preacher" like delivery and literal acceptance of the bible.

Chances are, he's better qualified to talk about chemistry than you are, for instance

Sure he is!!! and probably you also.

 

[paddoboy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolu...is context, is,the major patterns of change."
Many scientists and philosophers of science have described evolution as fact and theory, a phrase which was used as the title of an article by paleontologistStephen Jay Gould in 1981. He describes fact in science as meaning data, not known with absolute certainty but "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent".[1] A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of such facts. The facts of evolution come from observational evidence of current processes, from imperfections in organisms recording historical common descent, and from transitions in the fossil record. Theories of evolution provide a provisional explanation for these facts

 

[paddoboy]

https://ncse.ngo/theory-and-fact-evolution

Theory and the Fact of Evolution
Biologists often say that "evolution is a fact" (see, for example, Futuyma, 1979; Edwords, 1987), and creationists often say that "evolution is just a theory." To evaluate the truth in these contradictory statements, one needs to examine fact and theory and the context in which the terms are used.

The most basic facts in science are the "brute, sensory facts" from perceptions which are shared and on which we agree. From these sensory facts, scientists build facts and concepts of increasing complexity. When there is solid agreement on the statement of a complexity, scientists may call the statement a fact. Holton reported on Einstein's use of fact:

When biologists say that "evolution is a fact," I think they mean that they accept the following statement so firmly that they consider it to be as true as any basic sensory fact: each species arose from another species that preceded it in time, and higher taxa arose by a continuation of the speciation processes. The term fact as commonly applied to such statements signifies not the kind of content in the statements but, rather, the strength of our acceptance of the statements. So, if we are willing to accept a broad definition of fact, biologists are correct in saying that "evolution is a fact."

But in the context of Darwin's The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection and the modern theories of evolution, "evolution is a fact" may tend to block a full view of the major theories and the hundreds of subtheories found in the study of evolution (Lewis, 1980). To consider this possible blockage, one must examine the meaning of theory, a term that is often misused to mean a notion, a deduction, a single idea or postulate, or anything an author is unsure of.


more//////////////////

 

[paddoboy]

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150803-how-do-we-know-evolution-is-real

Evolution is one of the greatest theories in all of science. It sets out to explain life: specifically, how the first simple life gave rise to all the huge diversity we see today, from bacteria to oak trees to blue whales.

For scientists, evolution is a fact. We know that life evolved with the same certainty that we know the Earth is roughly spherical, that gravity keeps us on it, and that wasps at a picnic are annoying.

Not that you would know that from the media in some countries, where evolution is ferociously argued about – put down as "just a theory" or dismissed as a flat-out lie.

Why are biologists so certain about this? What is the evidence? The short answer is that there is so much it's hard to know where to start. But here is a very cursory summary of the evidence that life has, indeed, evolved.

more................

 

[Write4U]

Theories of evolution provide a provisional explanation for these facts

Because evolution is a mathematically based theory and therefore testable and repeatable.....

There is no known miracle that is testable and/or repeatable.

 

[James R]

Wouldn't the whole point of a workable theory of abiogenesis be to provide an exact methodology and pathway?

Of course...That does not invalidate that Abiogenesis is the only scientific theory for the emergence of life though.

So it's a theory that offers no exact methodology or pathway? A theory that provides no actual explanation for the phenomenon, in other words?

 

[Q-reeus]

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150803-how-do-we-know-evolution-is-real

Evolution is one of the greatest theories in all of science. It sets out to explain life: specifically, how the first simple life gave rise to all the huge diversity we see today, from bacteria to oak trees to blue whales.

For scientists, evolution is a fact. We know that life evolved with the same certainty that we know the Earth is roughly spherical, that gravity keeps us on it, and that wasps at a picnic are annoying.

Not that you would know that from the media in some countries, where evolution is ferociously argued about – put down as "just a theory" or dismissed as a flat-out lie.

Why are biologists so certain about this? What is the evidence? The short answer is that there is so much it's hard to know where to start. But here is a very cursory summary of the evidence that life has, indeed, evolved.

more................

https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/david-klinghoffer/scientists-confirm-darwinism-broken

 

[James R]

https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/david-klinghoffer/scientists-confirm-darwinism-broken

An article written by somebody from the Discovery Institute (i.e. Creationism Central). Bound to be without bias. It gives a lot of column space to the views of Meyer, another Creationist.

I guess you didn't get much out of it, either.

 

[paddoboy]

So it's a theory that offers no exact methodology or pathway? A theory that provides no actual explanation for the phenomenon, in other words?

Half way there James...It's a theory of which we do not know [as opposed to no explanation] of the exact methodology or pathway. Who knows what Tomorrow may bring?

 

[James R]

Half way there James...It's a theory of which we do not know [as opposed to no explanation] of the exact methodology or pathway. Who knows what Tomorrow may bring?

A theory that doesn't actually explain what it purports to explain is not much of a theory, in my book.

 

[paddoboy]

A theory that doesn't actually explain what it purports to explain is not much of a theory, in my book.

Strange. Did gravity go away because we couldn't describe it in Newton's day?
We have a better handle and methodology today but, as simply spacetime geometry.

 

[Q-reeus]

Half way there James...It's a theory of which we do not know [as opposed to no explanation] of the exact methodology or pathway. Who knows what Tomorrow may bring?

Abiogenesis as a general concept is not synonymous with the more restricted unguided abiogenesis though you never differentiate. There is no theory at all, just an ever growing collection of more or less disparate hypotheses. This was covered in a recent post. None of those hypotheses claim to tentatively cover any more than a tiny aspect of the hoped for grand theme of rigorously explaining unguided development from simple prebiotic chemicals to the self-reproducing cell.

 

[James R]

Strange. Did gravity go away because we couldn't describe it in Newton's day?

Prior to Newton, nobody would have said that the "things fall down" theory was the "only scientific theory we have for why things don't just float around", and then claimed that this theory was an adequate explanation of why things don't float around.

The "things fall down" theory is roughly equivalent to your "theory of abiogenesis" in terms of its completeness and explanatory power as a scientific theory.

 

[exchemist]

A theory that doesn't actually explain what it purports to explain is not much of a theory, in my book.

Quite. There is no theory of abiogenesis yet, just as there is no theory of quantum gravity yet.

Some people seem to labour under the delusion that simply making the standard naturalistic assumption of all science, viz. that natural processes were responsible, constitutes a theory of some kind.

 

[Write4U]

Half way there James...It's a theory of which we do not know [as opposed to no explanation] of the exact methodology or pathway. Who knows what Tomorrow may bring?

Given the enormous time scales, it is perfectly normal that exact dates of events are approximate. That does not negate the overwhelming evidence that these events happened, it just makes it difficult to establish exact dates.

But does anyone dispute the BB anymore? When exactly did that occur? Could our estimation of that event be off by a few billion years?
Does that mean the BB didn't happen, or is the evidence sufficient to establish the truth of this event, albeit not the exact date?

 

[Write4U]

Abiogenesis as a general concept is not synonymous with the more restricted unguided abiogenesis though you never differentiate.

Apparently, you have never heard of the "guiding equation" .
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/#

There is no theory at all, just an ever growing collection of more or less disparate hypotheses. This was covered in a recent post. None of those hypotheses claim to tentatively cover any more than a tiny aspect of the hoped for grand theme of rigorously explaining unguided development from simple prebiotic chemicals to the self-reproducing cell.

And who is exhibiting a completely myopic perspective of Universal properties and identified functional evolutionary processes.

Your's is a desperate attempt to expand your God of the Gaps from what is left of it's original primitive concept of omnipotence and omni-causality, but alas, the gaps are shrinking as we speak, as witnessed by the recognition of the Papal Academy of Sciences that Evolution is "fact". I'm afraid you are beginning to argue against your own expressed "beliefs".

 

[Write4U]

Quite. There is no theory of abiogenesis yet, just as there is no theory of quantum gravity yet.

Some people seem to labour under the delusion that simply making the standard naturalistic assumption of all science, viz. that natural processes were responsible, constitutes a theory of some kind.

Well, it seems to me that the assumption of purely natural properties and functions is a conservative base-line against which to judge all other speculative theories.

 

[Yazata]

If wikipedia is defining "evolution" to be "the major patterns of change" that are observed in the data (e.g. fossil record, DNA), then it's fine to call it a fact. But the "theory of evolution" is a theory that sets out to explain those major patterns of change.

Yes. And I'd guess that is what Gould meant.

Gould sounds a bit confused there, though I'd give him benefit of the doubt since its an out-of-context quote that you may have mangled.

Gould was one of the 20th century's foremost evolutionary biologists. And he was also a science popularizer. A rather blithe and at times unguarded science popularizer whose language was't always all that carefully chosen.

If he says evolution is "a theory" and "also a fact", but also that "facts and theories are different things", then it can't really be both, can it? Unless they aren't mutually exclusive in his mind.

I don't think that he saw them as mutually exclusive. Here's my reconstruction:

I would define 'fact' as 'actually existing state of affairs' out there in objective reality. And there is a basic definition of 'evolution' as 'change over time', as in 'the evolution of a physical system'. I expect that Gould thought of biological change over time as actually existing in objective reality and hence a fact in my sense.

And 'theories' are human-created conceptual structures designed to facilitate the new observation fitting into a larger body of previous observation and hopefully to somehow explain the new observation in terms of how the previous observations were observed to have behaved. And I expect that Gould thought of evolution as that kind of larger conceptual framework as well.

Two different ideas, but both applicable to evolution.

But if that's the case, then the question of whether evolution is a fact or a theory becomes meaningless; there's no debate to be had if it can be both at the same time.

Pointing out the ambiguity in the word and how the word is often used to mean two rather different things hopefully prevents us from slippy-sliding back and forth from one meaning to the other in our arguments.

From the given quote, it is hard to draw the conclusion that Gould thinks something can be both a theory and a fact simultaneously, because he writes "Theories are ... ideas that explain ... facts". If something is a fact and a theory, simultaneously, then we'd have a case of a fact being an idea that explains other facts, which blurs the distinction rather hopelessly in my opinion.

I don't want to put words in Gould's mouth, but I'd guess that he is saying that the word 'evolution' is used to simultaneously refer both to biological change over time (something I'm guessing that he considered a fact) and to Darwin's theory of biological evolution by natural selection (the explanatory conceptual framework).

So, I'm left in a muddle as to what he means when he says evolution is both a theory and a fact. Maybe he was just having an off day when he wrote that.

Maybe. He had a tendency to have bad days in his popular writing. But in this case, I'd guess that the context of these remarks made clear what he meant. That's a danger of snipping sentences out of somebody's writing, then triumphantly quoting them as meaning something that the author didn't mean to say.

I might have just done that to Gould myself, in applying my own understanding of 'fact' and 'theory' to what he said. In order to know what he really meant, one will have to go back and read what he actually wrote. It can't be reliably ascertained by imaginatively reconstructing from a snippet.

 

[Yazata]

https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/david-klinghoffer/scientists-confirm-darwinism-broken

There's indeed a coterie of scientists who may or may not believe that "Darwinism" is "broken". And several of them were organizers of this Royal Society conference that's the subject of this essay. I believe that at least one of them, a famous Oxford figure, believes that "Darwinism" and natural selection needs to be replaced by a new 'paradigm', but has never explained in any detail what he thinks the better paradigm should be.

Before I can comment on how credible their complaints seem to me to be, I would need to know what "Darwinism" refers to and what "broken" means when they use that word. I'm exceedingly skeptical about the claim that "Darwinism is broken" at present and see no reason to agree with it.

The writer paraphrases the opening address:

"Dr. Muller opened the meeting by discussing several of the fundamental "explanatory deficits" of "the modern synthesis," that is, textbook neo-Darwinian theory. According to Muller, the as yet unsolved problems include those of explaining:

Phenotypic complexity (the origin of eyes, ears, body plans, i.e., the anatomical and structural features of living creatures)

Phenotypic novelty, i.e., the origin of new forms throughout the history of life..."

and the existence of

"...abrupt discontinuities in the fossil record between different types."

I see nothing controversial about that. These are certainly outstanding problem issues in evolutionary theory. But how do they indicate that "Darwinism" is "broken", as opposed to evolutionary biology still being incomplete and a work in progress? 'Broken' suggests a need for replacement, while 'incomplete' suggests a continuing need for more work. Those are two very different things.

Pretty clearly, addressing these kind of issues will require a lot more knowledge of developmental biology, a lot better understanding of how changes on the genotypic level express in changes on the phenotypic level.

So I'd say that the answers are likely to be found in the currently hot sub-speciality of evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo). How does a set of genes steer the development of a complete organism? There's lots of complexities hidden in that relationship and even small changes in any of it can result in changes (sometimes dramatic changes) in what results. That's where I'd guess that explanations of phenotypic form, for novelties and for discontinuities in phenotypic form will come from.

That doesn't overthrow evolutionary biology, or "Darwinism" or "neo-Darwinism" or whatever. It just means that they need to be extended. It just means that things are a lot more complicated than Darwin suspected and that lots of work remains to be done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_developmental_biology

 

[iceaura]

The theory of evolution is one theory that is now determined as fact

There are several kinds of theories of evolution. The two most commonly mentioned these days are Lamarckian and Darwinian.

Darwinian theory has proved the most valuable for organizing and explaining the origin of biological taxons , and also the most widely applicable in the natural or uncreated world generally (Darwinian theory has proved extraordinarily powerful at all logical levels of material organization in the natural world, including the basic and elementary and immediate, which makes its difficulty and "unintuitive" nature one of the most revealing indicators of the nature of the human mind).

Lamarckian theory has so far proved valuable in a few restricted and less understood arenas of human investigation or curiosity only ( small aspects of human culture, manufactured goods, created things generally, is about it). Whether that is a cause or consequence (or both, 2nd order) of its sparse and unreliable formalization, that unavailability of rigorous abstraction or description currently limits even its potential for application.

Meanwhile, the use of "evolution" - the one word - to refer simultaneously to both Darwinian theory and the observations it was invented to explain seems to confuse people - a careful analyst would probably avoid doing that.