Evolution, testability and scientific dogma

[dust1n]

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...

The Venture Bros. And just visiting for the day. =D

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

The Venture Bros. And just visiting for the day. =D

Thanks, I'll have to check it out. I'm sure my son has seen it and can fill me in.
Take care, and come back to visit!

 

[Sapiens]

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 tell 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).

Yes, now that we have moved beyond Leucippus' atom (άτομο) and Einstein's transformation of energy and matter we are waiting for answers that even Higgs and Englert did not proffer. But let us not fall into the trap of confusing that current (and temporary) absence of answers to every question that might be asked with a "scientific" argument from ignorance every bit as pernicious as that of the theists.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Yes, now that we have moved beyond Leucippus' atom (άτομο)

This is my nitpicky, annoying obsession with accuracy combining with my secondary major in Ancient Greek and Latin, but in Greek the word is ἄτομος, not ἄτομο. I'm aware this correction is needless, pointless, and ridiculous but I can't help myself (sorry!).

But let us not fall into the trap of confusing that current (and temporary) absence of answers to every question that might be asked with a "scientific" argument from ignorance every bit as pernicious as that of the theists.

Of course. And I'm glad you point this out, as when I ask questions such as those I pointed to I intend them to be understood in he context of a scientific epistemology and that their answers be found via scientific inquiry (with a healthy portion of philosophy and metaphysics that complement the scientific endeavor), not a free-for-all in which knowledge gaps place entities like the soul on equal footing with electrons or the strong nuclear force.

 

[Sapiens]

This is my nitpicky, annoying obsession with accuracy combining with my secondary major in Ancient Greek and Latin, but in Greek the word is ἄτομος, not ἄτομο. I'm aware this correction is needless, pointless, and ridiculous but I can't help myself (sorry!).

That's OK ... thanks, I appreciate pedantry at times. I fear my Greek and Latin (and middle English for that matter) we confined to equipping me to haltingly read the "Great Books" in their original, the point I was trying to make was "atom" meaning "indivisible" rather than small.

But let us not fall into the trap of confusing that current (and temporary) absence of answers to every question that might be asked with a "scientific" argument from ignorance every bit as pernicious as that of the theists.

Of course. And I'm glad you point this out, as when I ask questions such as those I pointed to I intend them to be understood in he context of a scientific epistemology and that their answers be found via scientific inquiry (with a healthy portion of philosophy and metaphysics that complement the scientific endeavor), not a free-for-all in which knowledge gaps place entities like the soul on equal footing with electrons or the strong nuclear force.[/QUOTE]Hear! Hear! On the same page.