Then it has the same merit as it started with.
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Darwin's Illusion
- Thread starter Neuropteron
- Start date
Smokescreen perhaps.
In the first two chapters of "The Origin of Species", Darwin discusses individual variation within populations (not all members are equally fit as supported by the evidence) and he provides numerous examples. He then goes on to discuss the fact that populations can outproduce their resources. This is not the basis for an assumption or argument for stable populations. Clearly, Darwin sees populations as unstable and recognizes that some individuals are more fit than others relative to the environment. It is the environment that favors those more fit and they have the greater reproductive opportunity. There is no suggestion that the less fit do not reproduce at all or that less fit is some moral judgement keeping them suppressed or condoning their destruction. There is no claim they are destroyed. I can't see how anyone could come to that conclusion if they have actually read what Darwin wrote.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Let's remember how long ago Darwin lived. The Theory of Evolution today not only has collected overwhelming evidence, but we have adjusted it to be a much more complicated theory today than it was back then.
gnostic
The Lost One
I don't understand them myself.
I don't understand why they wanted to appear wrong or dishonest with making such claims.
Don't worry. You can always wait a day or two and then start doing what you do here all over again as if no one pointed out anything.
gnostic
The Lost One
No, the issue isn't with Natural Selection, as I don't need belief to understand it, as there have been evidence to support this mechanism from back then, then to this day.
The only weaknesses is that Darwin didn't have the technology to do more, and the other is that his contemporary Gregor Mendel had better explanation to genetics than Darwin's
did.
I don't think you understand Natural Selection as you believe you do.
I think you have misunderstood what I meant.
To be clearer, each living generation will pass on the the necessary traits to the next, and this new generation will pass it on the next generation, until you have lines of descendants.
What I am also saying that fitness is about each generation have the ability to reproduce and pass on any positive traits that it will allow the population to thrive and to continue to reproduce.
I am not saying the dead reproduce.
Is that clearer?
cladking
Well-Known Member
I don't blame Darwin for being so wrong. For his time and place he was a remarkably insightful man and while the damage he caused was extreme it was not intended and most was done in his name. A corollary to everyone makes sense all the time is that everyone does what he thinks is right all the time. Darwin thought he was promoting science while in fact he promoted only the scientific method and most never noticed there was little science in his work.
The nature of all research and study is to build. But there is still no experimental justification for his assumptions.
cladking
Well-Known Member
- Despite periodic fluctuations, populations remain roughly the same size (fact).
On the Origin of Species - Wikipedia
All of Darwin's assumptions were wrong but even if some or all were right he still would have reasoned in circles. Homo circularis rationatio.
Because his assumptions were wrong his conclusions were wrong.
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cladking
Well-Known Member
Darwin's work was of extreme importance because by promoting the scientific method he also showed that either God was not necessary to explain existence or that God's role in creating reality was more indirect. While his work promoted bad beliefs it still brought humanity one giant leap closer to a world with better (or no) beliefs.
It's not Darwin's fault so many had to die to accomplish this but this is the nature of our species. We resist change. We resist reality itself in favor of what we have chosen to believe.
cladking
Well-Known Member
And herein hides why we reason in circles. "Assumptions" exist because of and within language. Without numerous assumptions we can't even parse a sentence or acquire language to start with. Every individual is a product of his place and time because assumptions vary all over and over time. Our thinking is linear just like our languages. Since thought itself is linear it is determined by our starting place.
Darwin caused no damage. Au contraire. He reinvented biology by penning its central theory, which has borne fruit. He's one of a handful of human beings that have accomplished so much.
The theory works. It accurately anticipates outcomes in agriculture and medicine, for example. It has accurately delineated things which can and cannot happen in biology. That justifies its assumptions in the same way the failure of astrology to do that lets us know that its fundamental precepts are incorrect. You don't count that success as evidence that the ideas leading to it are correct, but I do.
Not all of us. There is a tried-and-true way of thinking that generates sound conclusions, that is, correct ideas, while weeding out false and unfalsifiable ideas. It involves skepticism for received "wisdom," and empiricism, or the proper application of reason to evidence. Learn that, and your thinking becomes more clear as your analytical skills improve.
Many assumptions exist because we experience life and extract inductions that, if we do it well, allow us to successfully navigate life. Some are irresistible intuitions imposed on us a priori such as that we exist and have experience in space and time and that there is a real world out there. Some are the result of naive ignorance, like a flat earth assumption. Some are the result of indoctrination, such as the assumption that a god or afterlife exist.
cladking
Well-Known Member
No. It appears to work. Part of seeing only what we believe is that it's very difficult to see anomalies but every scientific theory ALWAYS involves anomalies. This is one of the chief means by which science progresses; the study of anomalies.
It doesn't work because it's right or most people can't see anomalies it works because it is logical, and reality is logical.
I don't know why I have to rep[eat things so much but;
Reality is logic manifest.
Life is logic incarnate.
Math is logic quantified.
Experiment is not reality at all. It is science. It is metaphysics. It is the only means to generate theory. Experiment is designed to show some tiny bit of reality. No, it doesn't show a picture at all, it only shows a tiny bit because experiment reduces reality to a single elemental part. This is simple metaphysics every single scientist understands though very few would express any of this this way. How anything is said is irrelevant because everyone will parse it differently anyway. These are simple truisms supported by every experiment ever done. These truisms underlie the paradigmatical understanding of everything. This paradigm is not bits and pieces of reality but a hazy, incomplete, and out of focus look at the big picture.
Trying to keep all of this in mind now read this sentence: Any logical explanation for reality will have correspondences with reality. It will resonate with reality and will sometimes be an effective means to even make simple predictions. Stick a stake in the human heart and it will probably die. This has been known for a very long time and is part of every theory to explain human life since it was known.
The theory does not work. You simply shrug off anomalies like selective breeding that produces new species almost overnight. You shrug off the fact that a gradual change is not visible in any species in the fossil record. You shrug off the fact science knows no more about consciousness than it did when Jesus (mightta) walked the earth just as you shrug off the fact we don't really know anything more about gravity than the superstitious bumpkins Egyptology believes built the pyramids.
All of our beliefs are founded on the assumptions of Newton, Champollion, Masperro, Freud, Darwin, et many als. But no one has gone back to these assumptions and shown they are correct. They underlie both science and scientific dogma. Even though they have never been tested the fact is countless thousands of experiments have been done to show they are wrong. But everyone even if they can change their beliefs still sees experiment one at a time. They want to apply only experiments they deem relevant to every question but in reality just as reality is affected by every single thing in reality so too does every single experiment ever conducted apply to every question.
And each individual, every single human being, must reason in circles. It is the nature of our brain. I don't believe I've arrived at some universal truth because I'm smart, I don't even believe in intelligence as most perceive it. I arrived at the reality because I just happened to start with the correct assumptions and then reasoned right back to them.
This is all very very simple and I have logic, evidence, experiment, and concordances to support it. It is logical.
Look for the anomalies in Darwin's theory. They are everywhere. When you find an anomaly study it. Experiment on it. Think about it
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cladking
Well-Known Member
I express it differently because I am a metaphysician and the only one ever using two metaphysics which includes Homo Sapien Science. Homo sapiens are extinct and not one of them ever performed an experiment.
cladking
Well-Known Member
"Empiricism" is ultimately just a way to say "interpretation of evidence in terms of the prevailing paradigm".
It has always meant this even as new paradigms come and go at funerals.
cladking
Well-Known Member
Yes! Exactly. This is exactly what I mean when I say many assumptions are passed down as language. These assumptions are never tested but one after another has been found to be false. Many of them were simply absurd but were passed down anyway. Indeed, there are still numerous highly absurd assumptions part and parcel of language that are almost universally believed. Homo circularis rationatio.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
I don't think it is fair to say that Darwin was wrong. He simply didn't have as complete a picture as we have today. His intuitions were astounding. Do we say that Newton was wrong simply because Einstein gave us a more accurate picture? Do we say that Wegener was wrong simply because the theory of Plate Tectonics is so much more advanced today?
cladking
Well-Known Member
I fully agree. The man and his work were exemplary especially for the era in which he worked.
But his errors often persist. It would hardly be necessary to point out Darwin's errors if modern science didn't still employ them.
Just like my car.
Empiricism is extracting useful inductions from experience. A "prevailing paradigm" can be tested and found reliable, such as that for critical thought.
Experiment is experiencing reality. Critical thinking - also a tried-and-true paradigm - allows us to abstract useful inductions from that experience (empiricism). I don't require anything more from any paradigm.
Empiricism is the only means to generate useful ideas, by which I mean ideas that can inform choices and result in desired outcomes as described here by an anonymous Internet source:
"Truth has no meaning divorced from any eventual decision making process. The whole point of belief itself is to inform decisions and drive actions. Actions then influence events in the external world, and those effects lead to objective consequences. Take away any of these elements and truth immediately loses all relevance.
"We should expect similar decisions made under similar circumstances to lead to similar outcomes. Pragmatism says that the ultimate measure of a true or false proposition lies in its capacity to produce expected results. If an idea is true, it can be used in the real world to generate predictable consequences, and different ones if that idea turned out to be false. In other words, the ultimate measure of a true proposition is the capacity to inform decisions under the expectation of desirable consequences.
"All we need to know is that we have desires and preferences, we make decisions, and we experience sensory perceptions of outcomes. If a man has belief B that some action A will produce desired result D, if B is true, then doing A will achieve D. If A fails to achieve D, then B is false. Either you agree that truth should be measured by its capacity to inform decisions and produce results or you don't. If you agree, then we can have a conversation. And if we disagree about some belief, we have a means to decide the issue."
This kind of thinking is much mire productive than what you are doing here, which generates no useful ideas, at least none I can use, and I don't see you using them profitably either. Recall our recent discussion on the epistemic nihilism of postmodernism taken too far. The above is the cure. It's sensible. It's practical. It works. It can get one to where he wants to be. What life do you want to live? If there's a path from here to there, the above is it.
OK. I don't need more from an epistemology.
That's incorrect. It appears that that is what you see in my words and everybody else's. I assure you that that's you. I see something else. If you're making progress, then you're not going in circles.
I have. I've been reading your words on the topic for months. I find no merit there.
Irrelevant to the theory (I'm changing species to breed or stain or race or variety; speciation isn't an overnight thing, but these shorter journeys can be just a few months or years, even days with some bacteria), and not something I would call an anomaly. We expect artificial selection to produce different results than natural selection.
Also irrelevant even if I agreed with the statement. You insist otherwise, but can't make a supporting argument or even explain to others why you wrote those words. I really have literally no idea why you think consciousness is relevant to matters of biological evolution or even what it is that you are referring to, since you say that all life is conscious. Not as psychologists use the word.
Same answer. I don't agree, but can stipulate to it, because it too is irrelevant to Darwin's theory.
That's not a fact. It's an error. Also, I don't know why you keep repeating that.
But let's stipulate to that: we don't see what you say we don't see in the evidence for the theory (we needn't limit ourselves to fossil evidence). Why do you consider that important? I don't think you believe that evolution doesn't occur, and you don't seem to be one of those "but it's still a fish" people who use words like micro- and macroevolution. If it's neither of those, then what is your larger point (less large than "Darwin was wrong")?
Yes, and that is a good thig when those assumptions have been vetted. It how culture is transmitted, and it will play a big role after the climate change correction that I expect will thin the herd considerably and result in a dystopic world with crumbled infrastructure much like the Dark Ages following the fall of Rome, when passing the knowledge from Greece and Rome to the Muslims and then to medieval Europe preserved knowledge that was no longer being used - a great victory for language and assumptions as you call them.
cladking
Well-Known Member
It's not irrelevant because we believe ignorant and superstitious people can employ great complexity. We believe bees can invent a waggle dance and then use instinct to remember it or further refine it. We believe consciousness isn't required for a rabbit to evade predation or for an oak tree to grow. We each believe we know almost everything through science or religion and everything we see confirms our beliefs. Our beliefs thereby become so fixed and moribund that everything can only change when the old dies off.
Everything is relevant. All of reality affects all of the rest of reality in the here and now all the time. All of everyone's beliefs affect the direction of his life, actions, thinking, and every conclusion. Paradigms change and just like a living thing they do not evolve and the change is sudden Ironically the change is also like real life in that it takes a few generations as the old ideas and individuals die.
What Darwin believed after hos study was the same thing he believed before his study and this is just about always the case unless EXPRERIMENT shows us to be wrong. Only EXPERIMENT is metaphysical. Only EXPERIMENT is theory. Only EXPERIMENT can give us glimpses of reality. Everything else is a mirage created by what we want to believe.