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From: anthro@ut-ngp.UUCP (Michael Fischer)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: re: Scientific Evolution
Message-ID: <875@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Sep-84 01:48:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.875
Posted: Mon Sep  3 01:48:04 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Sep-84 09:09:30 EDT
Organization: Comp. Center, Univ. of Texas at Austin
Lines: 88

Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Let's have scientific evolutionism too
<ref L. Bickford followup>
<<Origins. How did what is get to be the way it is? Unless there are
<<eyewitnesses, there is no scientific "proof" of what occurred. We can
<<formulate models, test them against one another, and see what accounts
<<for the evidence better, with fewer secondary assumptions.

For the purposes of this followup, I am taking 'evolution' to refer to the
evolution of life forms according to guidelines presented later. I restrict
myself to this usage of evolution. 

To minimize verbage, and to provide easy targets, I use the following points.

1) Evolution is a theory whose domain is change in life forms.  This includes
   the past, present and future. 
2) Evolution is generally applied to populations of life forms, rather than
   individual life forms.
3) Evolution is a theory, but the mechanisms of evolution are observable,
   replicable processes.  

<<      NATURALISM: the features that are present have arisen wholly
<<                  from present laws and processes;
<<       SUPERNATURALISM: present laws and processes are inadequate to
<<              	explain current features; therefore, supernatural
<<	         	intervention must have occurred.

	<<"...a period of special creation in the beginning, during which
	<<all the basic laws and categories of nature, including the major
**1     <<kinds of plants and animals, as well as man, were brought into
	<<existence by special creative and integrative processes which
	<<are no longer in operation.
	<<"Once the creation was finished, these processes of creation were
**2     <<replaced by processes of conservation, which were designed by the
	<<creator to sustain and maintain the basic systems he had made.
**3     <<"...a basic principle of disintegration now at work in nature."
	<<	Morris, _Scientific Creationism_, p12

<<Creation *does* stand on its own scientific merits. The evidence is
<<there. The only difficulty is in accepting a supernatural model, which
<<can occur only when the naturalistic model fails - which the evolution
<<model has.

There is a problem I see with using creationism as a scientific theory. **1 
is the primary mechanism, and to my knowledge there is no body of evidence
that such a mechanism has ever been observed.  The only justification for
the mechanism is the theory itself.  When this situation exists, there
are an infinite number of mechanisms that can be posited, all of which
can justify themselves.  Indeed there is a simpler theory that eliminates
the messy entanglement of having a creator, ie one day the universe just
happened.  As far as I can quickly evaluate, the outcome of this theory
is structurally identical to the more complex theory involving a creator.
A creator would have to justified on grounds prior the the happening.  In
my line of work this kind of theory is known as 'magic'.

**2 also creates problems for creationism as scientific theory, since there
is no indication of what the sustaining principles, or as we call them in
the pool room, the 'correction factors' are. Again, to have scientific value
tests should be set to demonstrate the presence of these principles, since
presumably they are still with us, and should be present to play with.

**3 this point is probably not essential to the creation theory, and a good
thing, since I suspect I could prepare a falsification test for it.  I
will have to reserve this notion until the idea is explained more clearly.

I am not sure it is appropriate to move to a supernatural science every time
we find that there is something that cannot be accounted for.  If this 
had been used too often, I really doubt that much would have been accomplished
with respect to engineering.  I admit that after sweating over a mysterious
phantom pulse in a hardware system for hours it is tempting to determine
the fault lay with the magical properties of the system, but unfortunatly
it always turns out to be something I didn't think of before, the net result
being I learn something.

In terms of theory, creation theory is ok.  In terms of doing anything with
it, I see little that it can do.  This is ok for creationists, since so far
as I can see, they have no applications for creation science.  In my situation
I deal with evolution as a principle for present day analysis, not analysis
in far past.  I do have colleagues that use the theory to attempt to explain
events in the past.  In essence they use the same assumptions I do, although
they are more concerned with divergent evolution, and I in sequential evolution
The theory part of evolution is the assumption that principles that are now
observably in effect, have been in effect for the history of life forms on 
the earth.  I will agree that neither evolution or creation is at this time
provable, but I have little doubt of which one will be the basis of whatever
theory we have in the next century (if we have a next century).

Michael Fischer  anthro@utngp