But the scientific explanation, including through the theory of evolution, followed the data mining. Extinction is part of evolution. Apologies if my previous comments do not give early paleontology its due, but the fact remains that evolution won out among the possible answers and has the scientific distinction of providing a theoretical model able to explain the observed correlations. Lyell’s uniformitarian view on geology combated the catastrophist model advanced by believers in the deluge and laid the groundwork for Darwin. Thank you for the clarification, as above I was using evolution as a broad catch-all for the change in earth’s biology, including extinction. I don’t agree. Observation basically means collection of data. The ordering of data is a function of theory, which uncovers the natural rules governing observation. The argument about the Wired article turns on its assertion that observation alone, without scientific theory, can produce progress in knowledge when aggregated to large scale. Apologies again if my earlier phrasing was imprecise. An underlying point I was making, in defence of the quoted Einstein comment that theory decides if things are possible, was that Permian and Jurassic fossils originated respectively in the Permian and Jurassic ages, and our knowledge of their age of origin is not derived just from observation but by setting those observations within a detailed scientific theoretical framework.

Hi Van Rijn. Your comments express a mainstream sceptical view, but surely such humility on behalf of the scientific ability to understand nature is misplaced? My comment was that the core of main scientific theories is not going to be overturned by data. I simply believe that science has advanced to a level where it can recognise both the validity of its knowledge within core uncontested areas, and also recognise peripheral issues where findings are less certain. New findings are much more likely to add to current core knowledge rather than overturn it. In the case of gravity, the Newtonian inverse square law is basically correct, and relativistic effects are only detectable in exceptional places. Surely we can say that the law of gravity is true, with some qualifiers, and that the truth of the law is decisive for possible observations?

Agreed.

Only if you use "evolution" in a general sense to mean "history of life". Extinction certainly drives evolution, but so do enviromental changes, they are not part of evolution either.

As a matter of effect Lyell too believed in the deluge. In a great many respects the catastrophists - Sedgewick, Murchison, Buckland, Cuiver and many others were far more scientific in their approach than Lyell. Lyell assumed the uniformity of natural causes and denied directionality in Earth history. The catastrophists recognised that uniform processes could not explain all aspects of the geological record and saw directional change. In these respects they were much closer to undestanding the history of the Earth than Lyell, Lyell's emphasis on uniformity and rejection of directionality is why for most of his life he rejected organic evolution.

This is a common approach. I find it a bit loose, as the drivers of change in gene pools - biologic evolution - are very different to those that drive (for example) magmatic evolution in igenous rocks or textural evolution in sandstones.

All data, all observation, is framed within a context of interpretation. Our theories of the world drive what data we see as important. The lay person looks at a rock at sees a mass of lumps and bumps with different colours. A geologist will see a sediment containing different grains of different origins, sedimentary structures indicating depositional environents, a range of fossils, each with its own biological and taphonomic history, the whole showing the imprint of diagenesis, metamorphism, structural deformation, and weathering. Part of the challenge of teaching geology is to get students to understand which features are important and which are trivial. Which of these features are important will depend of which questions the scientist is interested in. So what is trivial or a handicap to a sedimentologist may be very important to the structural geologist. What annoys both may be a regolith geologit's bread and butter. As William Whewell (a contemporary of Lyell who coined the terms "uniformitarism", "catastrophism" and scientist") said: "there is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature".

This then I would agree with. It is the theory by which we interpret the data that allows us to differentiate Permian from Jurassic fossils. of course that theory is not a static thing, but dynamic, changing with new observations, such as the recongition of Lazarus taxa.

cheers

Jon

Any theory is only valid in so far as the data in-hand support it. Watch the Messenger Probe carefully - it keeps getting slightly off course, and no one is sure why.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

It seems to me that missing lately from this thread is the idea of successive refinement.

In particular, the Newtonian physics is a special case of relativistic physics, one that holds very well at normal mass/energy levels.

Any scientific theory can (and probably will be) refined repeatedly. This is, after all, part of the scientific method.

How, then, this process of revision would lead to its demise, is beyond me.

Megacomputing, etc, are nothing more or less than refinements.

And refinements in a philosophy that encourages substantitive refinements is hardly the death of the philosophy.

Yes, each successive improvement must replicate the successes of the previous one.It's not a special case, but an approximation. In a philosphical sense, as many have observed, subsequent theories are often radical departures.

It depends upon the point of view.

Um, how is, for instance, relativity, a radical departure from Newton? It's an enhancement, yes, but "radical departure" seems, well, brash.

It discards the notion of absolute space, and also removes the idea that the measurements of clocks and rulers can be considered independent of their motion. It also postulates that the measured speed of certain types of things will be found to have the same value regardless of how the observer is moving. Newton would have considered all of those to be a radical departure from his ideas about motion.

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Conserve energy. Commute with the Hamiltonian.

So, a "radical departure" is what the original theorizer would have considered radical?

I would say, rather, that it refined Newtonian mechanics by explaining how, in non-earth-normal conditions, rulers, clocks, and the like will lose their seemingly absolute meaning, and light will have surprising properties.

I won't attempt to speak for Newton.

I, furthermore, disagree with the idea that the change is "radical". A radical change, to me, would refute previous work, rather than enhance it. A radical change, for instance, is understanding that "junk DNA" might have function.

That seems as reasonable a definition as any in this context.

The original quote you were responding to was this:

In the actual predictions of the theories, relativity produces almost exactly the same results as Newtonian mechanics, as long as we limit ourselves to fairly low relative velocities and small gravitational fields. However, in their views of the nature of space and time, relativity is completely different from Newtonian mechanics.

As for speaking for Newton, I try to make certain to only assume what someone might have been thinking when it's reasonably clear from writings. In Newton's case, he makes it quite evident in the introduction to the Principia, as well as from documented arguments with many of his contemporaries (some of who thought that space and time were relative, although they probably would have also been shocked at just how relative they are in Einstein's theory), that he felt strongly that absolute space and absolute time exist independently of any measurement thereof, and without reference to anything external. He further felt that it is perfectly meaningful to speak of the absolute motion of some object, and that this is quite distinct from motion relative to some other object. These are foundational principles of the Principia, and Newton felt that they were important enough to devote a section at the beginning to discussing them in detail. Einstein's relativity says that any thought that there might be an absolute time or space that's independent of an observer is mistaken, and that there is simply no such thing as motion in any absolute sense. Relativity is derived from postulates which include the negation of Newton's underlying assumptions.

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Conserve energy. Commute with the Hamiltonian.