Evolution, testability and scientific dogma

[LegionOnomaMoi]

If anyone had the full paper that'd be useful too

See attached.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

True, however this dwells on the fringes of the absurd, rather than something plausible that could actually falsify the theory.

The truth is that the kind of criticisms the authors speak about have been made and continue to be made. Evolutionary theory isn't a single, falsifiable statement but a broad framework that not only serves, as the authors note, as a basis for much research in biology and related fields, but also as a platform to explore its own tenets. The discovery of the double helix preceded the paper by little over a decade, and yet we have come so far in our understanding of the relationship between genetics and evolution that "classical" genetics underlying the nature/nurture debate has been mostly discarded as mostly misguided, replaced by epigenetics. The notion that survival of the fittest is the only mechanism driving adaption is no longer believed to be true, as this fundamental tenet was questioned and found wanting by many if not most (it is still a central mechanism, but symbiotic relationships among species are ubiquitous). Here's an example of a description the type of questioning of "tenets" the authors refer to:

"Just what is the evolutionary paradigm that might be in crisis? It is sometimes called “the Modern Synthesis.” Fundamentally it comes down to a body of knowledge, interpretation, supposition, and extrapolation, integrated with the belief that natural selection is the all-sufficient cause of evolution—if it is assumed that variation is caused by gene mutations. The paradigm has built a strong relationship between ecology and evolution, and has stimulated a huge amount of research into population biology. It has also been the perennial survivor of crises that have ebbed and flowed in the tide of evolutionary ideas. Yet signs of discord are visible in the strong polarization of those who see the whole organism as a necessary component of evolution and those who want to reduce all of biology to the genes. Since neo-Darwinists are also hypersensitive to creationism, they treat any criticism of the current paradigm as a breach of the scientific worldview that will admit the fundamentalist hordes. Consequently, questions about how selection theory can claim to be the all-sufficient explanation of evolution go unanswered or ignored. Could most gene mutations be neutral, essentially invisible to natural selection, their distribution simply adrift? Did evolution follow a pattern of punctuated equilibrium, with sudden changes separated by long periods of stasis? Were all evolutionary innovations gene-determined? Are they all adaptive? Is complexity built by the accumulation of minor, selectively advantageous mutations? Are variations completely random, or can they be directed in some way? Is the generation of novelty not more important than its subsequent selection?
...
Gradualism had already been brought to the fore when geologists realized that what was first interpreted as the effects of the sudden Biblical flood was instead the result of prolonged glaciation. Therefore, Darwin readily fell in with Charles Lyell’s belief that geological change had been uniformly slow. Now, more than a century later, catastrophism has been resurrected by confirmation of the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) bolide impact that ended the Cretaceous and the dinosaurs. Such disasters are also linked to such putative events as the Cambrian “Big Bang of Biology,” when all of the major animal phyla seem to have appeared almost simultaneously. The luck of the draw has returned to evolutionary theory. Being in the right place at the right time during a cataclysm might have been the most important condition of survival and subsequent evolution.
Beyond the fringe of Darwinism, there are heretics who believe the neo-Lamarckist tenet that the environment directly shapes the organism in a way that can be passed on from one generation to the next. They argue that changes imposed by the environment, and by the behavior of the organism, are causally prior to natural selection. Nor is neo-Lamarckism the only alternative. Some evolutionary biologists, for example, think that the establishment of unique symbioses between different organisms constituted major evolutionary novelties. Developmental evolutionists are reviewing the concept that evolution was not gradual but saltatory (i.e., advancing in leaps to greater complexity)."
Reid, R. G. (2007). Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment (The Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology). MIT Press.

Another fundamental tenet of evolutionary theory that has been and is questioned quite comfortably within biology and other relevant sciences and (as the authors of the article suggest) without rejection "the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory" has to do with fitness functions. For me, a fitness function is a method used in machine learning/computational intelligence that, like so many other methods, is borrowed from living systems. "Fitness" is very easily and clearly defined. I was surprised to learn this isn't necessarily the case in evolutionary biology:
"Fitness was used to describe an organism’s vigor, or the degree to which organisms ‘‘fit’’ into their environments. An organism’s success in avoiding predators and in building a nest obviously contributes to its fitness and to the fitness of its offspring, but the peacock’s gaudy tail seemed to be in an entirely different line of work. Fitness, as a term in ordinary language (as in ‘‘physical fitness’’) and in its original biological meaning, applied to the survival of an organism and its offspring, not to sheer reproductive output...
Biologists came to see that this limit on the concept of fitness is theoretically unjustified. Fitness is relevant to evolution because of the process of natural selection. Selection has an impact on the traits that determine how likely it is for an organism to survive from the egg stage to adulthood, but it equally has an impact on the traits that determine how successful an adult organism is likely to be in having offspring. Success concerns not just the robustness of offspring but their number. As a result, we now regard viability and fertility as two components of fitness. If p is the probability that an organism at the egg stage will reach adulthood, and e is the expected number of offspring that the adult organism will have, then the organism’s overall fitness is the product pe, which is itself a mathematical expectation. Thus, a trait that enhances an organism’s viability but renders it sterile has an overall fitness of zero. And a trait that slightly reduces viability, while dramatically augmenting fertility, may be very fit overall."
Sober, E. (2006). The Two Faces of Fitness. In E. Sober (Ed.). Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology (3rd Ed.) (pp. 25-38). MIT Press.

The point is that the theory can't be realistically falsified because there is no single claim it makes to falsify. The claims that it makes, however, are constantly tested and when it comes to the cutting edge, some proposals on evolutionary mechanisms or concepts are incompatible with others as they involve as yet unresolved issues in biology, ecology, etc. The mark of a successful theory is its ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena, serve as a foundation for research, and to be extended, adapted, and bettered via research and testing (this is less true of theories in physics, where we seek to reduce theories to one or more differential equation, but even in physics general principles like symmetries and conservations drive and shape the development, testing, and formulation of modern theories of physics).

 

[Sultan Of Swing]

See attached.

The truth is that the kind of criticisms the authors speak about have been made and continue to be made. Evolutionary theory isn't a single, falsifiable statement but a broad framework that not only serves, as the authors note, as a basis for much research in biology and related fields, but also as a platform to explore its own tenets. The discovery of the double helix preceded the paper by little over a decade, and yet we have come so far in our understanding of the relationship between genetics and evolution that "classical" genetics underlying the nature/nurture debate has been mostly discarded as mostly misguided, replaced by epigenetics. The notion that survival of the fittest is the only mechanism driving adaption is no longer believed to be true, as this fundamental tenet was questioned and found wanting by many if not most (it is still a central mechanism, but symbiotic relationships among species are ubiquitous). Here's an example of a description the type of questioning of "tenets" the authors refer to:

"Just what is the evolutionary paradigm that might be in crisis? It is sometimes called “the Modern Synthesis.” Fundamentally it comes down to a body of knowledge, interpretation, supposition, and extrapolation, integrated with the belief that natural selection is the all-sufficient cause of evolution—if it is assumed that variation is caused by gene mutations. The paradigm has built a strong relationship between ecology and evolution, and has stimulated a huge amount of research into population biology. It has also been the perennial survivor of crises that have ebbed and flowed in the tide of evolutionary ideas. Yet signs of discord are visible in the strong polarization of those who see the whole organism as a necessary component of evolution and those who want to reduce all of biology to the genes. Since neo-Darwinists are also hypersensitive to creationism, they treat any criticism of the current paradigm as a breach of the scientific worldview that will admit the fundamentalist hordes. Consequently, questions about how selection theory can claim to be the all-sufficient explanation of evolution go unanswered or ignored. Could most gene mutations be neutral, essentially invisible to natural selection, their distribution simply adrift? Did evolution follow a pattern of punctuated equilibrium, with sudden changes separated by long periods of stasis? Were all evolutionary innovations gene-determined? Are they all adaptive? Is complexity built by the accumulation of minor, selectively advantageous mutations? Are variations completely random, or can they be directed in some way? Is the generation of novelty not more important than its subsequent selection?
...
Gradualism had already been brought to the fore when geologists realized that what was first interpreted as the effects of the sudden Biblical flood was instead the result of prolonged glaciation. Therefore, Darwin readily fell in with Charles Lyell’s belief that geological change had been uniformly slow. Now, more than a century later, catastrophism has been resurrected by confirmation of the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) bolide impact that ended the Cretaceous and the dinosaurs. Such disasters are also linked to such putative events as the Cambrian “Big Bang of Biology,” when all of the major animal phyla seem to have appeared almost simultaneously. The luck of the draw has returned to evolutionary theory. Being in the right place at the right time during a cataclysm might have been the most important condition of survival and subsequent evolution.
Beyond the fringe of Darwinism, there are heretics who believe the neo-Lamarckist tenet that the environment directly shapes the organism in a way that can be passed on from one generation to the next. They argue that changes imposed by the environment, and by the behavior of the organism, are causally prior to natural selection. Nor is neo-Lamarckism the only alternative. Some evolutionary biologists, for example, think that the establishment of unique symbioses between different organisms constituted major evolutionary novelties. Developmental evolutionists are reviewing the concept that evolution was not gradual but saltatory (i.e., advancing in leaps to greater complexity)."
Reid, R. G. (2007). Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment (The Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology). MIT Press.

Another fundamental tenet of evolutionary theory that has been and is questioned quite comfortably within biology and other relevant sciences and (as the authors of the article suggest) without rejection "the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory" has to do with fitness functions. For me, a fitness function is a method used in machine learning/computational intelligence that, like so many other methods, is borrowed from living systems. "Fitness" is very easily and clearly defined. I was surprised to learn this isn't necessarily the case in evolutionary biology:
"Fitness was used to describe an organism’s vigor, or the degree to which organisms ‘‘fit’’ into their environments. An organism’s success in avoiding predators and in building a nest obviously contributes to its fitness and to the fitness of its offspring, but the peacock’s gaudy tail seemed to be in an entirely different line of work. Fitness, as a term in ordinary language (as in ‘‘physical fitness’’) and in its original biological meaning, applied to the survival of an organism and its offspring, not to sheer reproductive output...
Biologists came to see that this limit on the concept of fitness is theoretically unjustified. Fitness is relevant to evolution because of the process of natural selection. Selection has an impact on the traits that determine how likely it is for an organism to survive from the egg stage to adulthood, but it equally has an impact on the traits that determine how successful an adult organism is likely to be in having offspring. Success concerns not just the robustness of offspring but their number. As a result, we now regard viability and fertility as two components of fitness. If p is the probability that an organism at the egg stage will reach adulthood, and e is the expected number of offspring that the adult organism will have, then the organism’s overall fitness is the product pe, which is itself a mathematical expectation. Thus, a trait that enhances an organism’s viability but renders it sterile has an overall fitness of zero. And a trait that slightly reduces viability, while dramatically augmenting fertility, may be very fit overall."
Sober, E. (2006). The Two Faces of Fitness. In E. Sober (Ed.). Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology (3rd Ed.) (pp. 25-38). MIT Press.

The point is that the theory can't be realistically falsified because there is no single claim it makes to falsify. The claims that it makes, however, are constantly tested and when it comes to the cutting edge, some proposals on evolutionary mechanisms or concepts are incompatible with others as they involve as yet unresolved issues in biology, ecology, etc. The mark of a successful theory is its ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena, serve as a foundation for research, and to be extended, adapted, and bettered via research and testing (this is less true of theories in physics, where we seek to reduce theories to one or more differential equation, but even in physics general principles like symmetries and conservations drive and shape the development, testing, and formulation of modern theories of physics).

Brilliant. What a wonderful explanation.

Thanks so much!

 

[Windwalker]

The definition of "dogma" is: a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. e.g., "the Christian dogma of the Trinity." As such there are no "dogmas" in science, there is always a bit of skepticism kept in reserve.

That's a faith statement on your part. There are in fact certain sacred cows in science that aren't questioned. It makes a lot of assumptions, such as the only thing real is the material world, and that everything can be reduced to matter alone and that everything is deterministic. It then bases observation and thought based on those assumptions. There are numerous other ones like this which takes assumptions and turns them into unquestionable doctrines. Science becomes Scientism. That's a dogma. This is well known. It's a naive faith in science that thinks that science can escape humanness, in the way faith in the priesthood will tell the truth they see in scripture. All are interpreters of data and all have biases, whether individual or collective biases.

 

[dust1n]

Charles Birch and Paul Ehrlich write in an article Evolutionary History and Population Biology, in Nature vol 214 (1967) pg 349:
’Our theory of evolution has become, as [Karl] Popper described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus outside of empirical science but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems, have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training. The cure seems to us not to be a discarding of the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, but more scepticism about many of its tenets.’

Thoughts?

"Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it."

Seems a bit of stretch. Even for 1967.

"Indeed, the recent vogue of historicism might be regarded as merely part of the vogue of evolutionism—a philosophy that owes its influence largely to the somewhat sensational clash between a brilliant scientific hypothesis concerning the history of the various species of animals and plants on earth, and an older metaphysical theory which, incidentally, happened to be part of an established religious belief.

What we call the evolutionary hypothesis is an explanation of a host of biological and paleontological observations—for instance, of certain similarities between various species and genera—by the assumption of common ancestry of related forms.

. . . I see in modern Darwinism the most successful explanation of the relevant facts. [Popper, 1957, p. 106; emphasis added]

There exists no law of evolution, only the historical fact that plants and animals change, or more precisely, that they have changed. [Popper, 1963b, p. 340; emphasis added]

I have always been extremely interested in the theory of evolution and very ready to accept evolution as a fact. [Popper, 1976, p. 167; emphasis added]

The Mendelian underpinning of modern Darwinism has been well tested and so has the theory of evolution which says that all terrestrial life has evolved from a few primitive unicellular organisms, possibly even from one single organism. [Popper, 1978, p. 344; emphasis added]""

More: http://ncse.com/cej/6/2/what-did-karl-popper-really-say-evolution

 

[Sapiens]

That's a faith statement on your part. There are in fact certain sacred cows in science that aren't questioned. It makes a lot of assumptions, such as the only thing real is the material world, and that everything can be reduced to matter alone and that everything is deterministic. It then bases observation and thought based on those assumptions. There are numerous other ones like this which takes assumptions and turns them into unquestionable doctrines. Science becomes Scientism. That's a dogma. This is well known. It's a naive faith in science that thinks that science can escape humanness, in the way faith in the priesthood will tell the truth they see in scripture. All are interpreters of data and all have biases, whether individual or collective biases.

That is obviously false since you are free to falsify anything in science that you are able to. The weakness in your argument is demonstrated by your inability to do so. Do you have any evidence for the existence of anything except the material world? Can you show any indication of anything that can not be reduced to matter alone? As far as universe being solely deterministic, that is your claim concerning my views and it is completely wrong since almost all of the science I worked on involved stochastic rather than deterministic processes.

 

[Revoltingest]

There exists no law of evolution, only the historical fact that plants and animals change, or more precisely, that they have changed. [Popper, 1963b, p. 340; emphasis added]

I heartily disagree.
IMO, the process of evolution is evidenced enuf to have become a law.
Reasonable (but wrong) people may disagree.
Matter behaves according to this law.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

I heartily disagree.
IMO, the process of evolution is evidenced enuf to have become a law.
Reasonable (but wrong) people may disagree.
Matter behaves according to this law.

Remember, you're objecting to a quote for a philosopher of science from a statement published in 1963, even older than the quote that started this thread...and taken out of it's original context, too...

 

[Revoltingest]

Remember, you're objecting to a quote for a philosopher of science from a statement published in 1963, even older than the quote that started this thread...and taken out of it's original context, too...

A lot of people were wrong about things in 1963.

 

[dust1n]

I heartily disagree.
IMO, the process of evolution is evidenced enuf to have become a law.
Reasonable (but wrong) people may disagree.
Matter behaves according to this law.

I don't agree, necessarily, either.

I just think the article linked in the OP seems to extrapolating something from Poppler which was not intended, or from some point in his life as his views on knowledge and science changed over his career. A fishy starting point to begin with...

 

[Revoltingest]

I don't agree, necessarily, either.

I just think the article linked in the OP seems to extrapolating something from Poppler which was not intended, or from some point in his life as his views on knowledge and science changed over his career. A fishy starting point to begin with...

Btw.....

 

[dust1n]

Btw.....

A peculiar season. Love where it went. Curious as to how it will proceed.

Just for you.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

A peculiar season. Love where it went. Curious as to how it will proceed.

Just for you.

Uh...what is it?

 

[dust1n]

Uh...what is it?

Custom gif from the best cartoon.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Custom gif from the best cartoon.

Sigh. I understand it is a gif. Neat that you can make custom ones.
And that best cartoon would be named....?
By the way, good to see you're still around...

 

[Ouroboros]

A peculiar season. Love where it went. Curious as to how it will proceed.

I haven't watched the show in years. I saw the first three seasons, but lack of time got the better of me. Some day I might try to catch up again. How many seasons are there now?

What was it now? 21 or 24 or something? Mr Hate? Girlfriend. LOL! Deepest voice of them all. The show was (and probably still is) hilarious.

 

[Sapiens]

Remember, you're objecting to a quote for a philosopher of science from a statement published in 1963, even older than the quote that started this thread...and taken out of it's original context, too...

I don't agree, necessarily, either.

I just think the article linked in the OP seems to extrapolating something from Poppler which was not intended, or from some point in his life as his views on knowledge and science changed over his career. A fishy starting point to begin with...

Popper did indeed originally have some questions on the falsifiability of Evolution and Natural Selection. He later qualified/altered/amended his views,: ”The theory of natural selection may be so formulated that it is far from tautological. In this case it is not only testable, but it turns out to be not strictly universally true. There seem to be exceptions, as with so many biological theories; and considering the random character of the variations on which natural selection operates, the occurrence of exceptions is not surprising. Thus not all phenomena of evolution are explained by natural selection alone. Yet in every particular case it is a challenging research program to show how far natural selection can possibly be held responsible for the evolution of a particular organ or behavioral program."

 

[Acim]

Do you have any evidence for the existence of anything except the material world? Can you show any indication of anything that can not be reduced to matter alone?

Yes and yes. The world of thoughts being prime example. Mathematics being a specific example.

I actually have no objective evidence for the existence of a material world. Will be interesting if that ever presents itself.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Can you show any indication of anything that can not be reduced to matter alone?

That's an interesting question for a number of reasons. The first (at least for me) is the struggle to understand or to formulate a naturalism in which terms like matter are either replaced or interpreted according to our current knowledge of fundamental physics. After all, from a certain point of view, little if anything can be reduced to matter alone (hence the title of the popular book by physicist Paul Davies The Matter Myth). But this is mostly a semantic issue and I won't dwell on it here.
More important are truly variant ontologies that have been developed largely because of developments in physics and biology. It is supremely difficult to determine what, if anything, physical systems in quantum physics are or what physical properties exist. In Bohmian mechanics, in addition to point particles of matter there exists a mysterious "pilot wave" guiding all the particles that isn't material, physical, reducible, or local. In one version of the transactional interpretation of QM, possibly existing states are physically real, but not actualized (and thus possibilities themselves are physical "things" somehow). In quantum field theory/particle physics, virtual particles are real but are not really material.
Even when we extend "matter" to include non-material entities such as energy, we are hardly rid of problems. What Feynman said in his famous lectures remains at least as true today as it did when they were published: "It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. It is not that way. However, there are formulas for calculating some numerical quantity, and when we add it all together it gives [for example] "28"- always the same number. It is an abstract thing in that it does not tel us the mechanism of the reasons for the various formulas."
Even more extreme is the viewpoint of those who take functional emergence seriously (as e.g., in relational biology). Here we accord ontological status to processes such as metabolism (or consciousness!) which are causally efficacious and- despite emerging from physical systems via physical means- not only cannot be reduced to some set of physical processes but are causally efficacious, determining the future states of the systems out of which they emerge.
Finally, there are those like Tegmark who take Platonism to an extreme and declare that reality is mathematics (a somewhat less extreme and far more common view is that the fundamental constituents of reality are not composed of matter but information).

 

[dust1n]

I haven't watched the show in years. I saw the first three seasons, but lack of time got the better of me. Some day I might try to catch up again. How many seasons are there now?

What was it now? 21 or 24 or something? Mr Hate? Girlfriend. LOL! Deepest voice of them all. The show was (and probably still is) hilarious.

They just finished Season 6. It understandable that it's hard to keep up since they'll go 2-3 years between seasons.