SCIENCE!

[elanid]

I'm supposed to be doing my homework, but I'd rather not (c'mon, you guys, I have a Chinese midterm, give me a break :P), so instead, I'm going to write about evolution.  One of my classes this year is an upper-division biology class, Experimental Ecology & Evolution (E3, for short, and I love it more than any class ever), which is giving me uppity

Comments

[brugenmeister]

2:

Furthermore, I never said some mystical force is what animates things. You are mistaking logic for magic. Just because an argument based upon logic is not a scientific argument does not make it magic. However, on that note, I must say, I have experienced things I cannot explain. Does that mean there isn't an explanation? No. But does that mean there is an experimentally reproducible explanation? No. It is for the very same reason that one can neither prove nor disprove God that you can neither prove nor disprove material reduction to causes. Ultimate causation (ie. determinism) can similarly be called reducible to 'faeries' in this manner. So don't you dare say that I'm resorting to superstition in making a carefully reasoned and self-contained argument when you are attacking it with a self-fulfilling argument that relies upon base causes that have no explanation.

saying that a theory has "greater explanatory power" means that it accords most closely with the data in all its complexity

Alright, now I'm a bit irritated, because you completely missed the refutation of this point for the third time. If you are going to counter an argument, use a new argument, don't restate the old one. (I'm saying this to help you develop better argumentative skills. I don't mean it in a malicious way.) Who gathers data? People. Sets of data are always incomplete. In fact, as we already established, there will always be an infinite amount of data that is both relevant and unaccounted for in any situation. Furthermore, the theory in question does not come from the data. This is part of the FUNDAMENTAL problem with scientific discourse. Nature does not speak to the scientist through data. The theory, as you have shown, comes from the scientist, not the data. The scientist matches an idea out of their head to an incomplete set of observations. But again, this does not get to the heart of Being itself. You are not examining nature. You are examining and theorizing on THE DATA.

To put this back into the basic ontological framework I established earlier: Science is the study of the "because" in the statement "Being is because…" Science studies causation. Science does not study Being itself. There. It’s right there. Don't dismiss this off the cuff. Sit down for a good hour and seriously think about what this means. "Being is because…" The scientist studies the "because". You want to talk to me about faeries, well guess what? The scientist makes up his/her own fairies. See, to me, this seems as mystical as you claim my argument to be. How can you make up the cause of Being and then attempt to match it with Being? You're not even comparing the same thing. My problem is not with Science but with when science assumes that "Being" is the "because" of Being. Much of Science confuses the "because" with "Being" itself. They are not the same thing. Science does not ever get closer to explaining "Being" because science is not explaining "Being". Science is explaining the "because".