Text 1242, 75 rader
Skriven 2004-12-29 21:29:00 av Ekurtz99 (1:278/230)
Ärende: Re: McGinn's disproof of
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"Joe Felsenstein" <joe@removethispart.gs.washington.edu> wrote in message 
news:cquoj4$u5k$1@darwin.ediacara.org...
> In article <cqthls$hpp$1@darwin.ediacara.org>,
> EKurtz99 <EKurtz99@TwilightZone.com> wrote:
>
>>You chose HWE as a simple modeling result that the skeptics must reject if
>>they are consistent. But what is true of HWE is also true for Mendel's
>>explanation of phenotypic ratios in what we now call Mendelian traits.
>>Likewise for the explanation of normally distributed quantitative traits,
>>linkage, recombination... If the skeptics had their way, genetics would
>>become merely a collection of observations with no explanatory structure.
>
> I think the issue is not just skepticism but that they think that they are
> being terribly Popperian by requiring that models be a precise description
> of nature.  That requires them to reject all previous models in biology,
> where the models are much rougher than in, say, physics.  The Popperian
> framework of making a prediction from the model, then completely tossing 
> out
> the model when the prediction is in any way wrong, doesn't work at all in
> population biology.  We have imprecise models and statistical evidence,
> rather than all-or-none predictions.

Agreed; problems in biology cannot possibly be addressed with the 
quantitative rigor that is found in physics.
It is a great pity that Popper never pronounced on the status of statistical 
evidence and modeling approximation; my suspicion is that he would have 
concluded that they are valid science, as long as their limitations are 
acknowledged. His criterion of falsifiability was intended to separate what 
he regarded as pseudoscience (Marxism, Freudian theory, astrology) from real 
science (of which physics was the Jewel in the Crown)

QUOTE
....the problem which I tried to solve by proposing the criterion of 
falsifiability was neither a problem of meaningfulness or significance, nor 
a problem of truth or acceptability. It was the problem of drawing a line 
(as well as this can be done) between the statements, or systems of 
statements, of the empirical sciences, and all other statements - whether 
they are of a religious or of a metaphysical character, or simply 
pseudo-scientific. Years later - it must have been in 1928 or 1929 - I 
called this first problem of mine the "problem of demarcation." The 
criterion of falsifiability is a solution to this problem of demarcation, 
for it says that statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked 
as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable, 
observations.
END QUOTE
Conjectures and Refutations (1963) 
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html

It would be easy to extend the final sentence to include a high degree of 
likeliness/unlikliness without losing the basic distinction.

> We make models that are idealized, define things like fitness that are
> meaningful in those models, and then try to refine the models.  But some
> of the "skeptics" want definitions of things like fitness that will be 
> able
> to work in the real world.  They don't realize that in doing this, they
> in effect erect their own not-quite-real models, but without being 
> explicit
> about it.  When a "skeptic" says that, by fitness I mean number of 
> offspring
> per parent (or whatever), they implicitly simplify the situation by 
> ignoring
> overlapping generations, and a bunch of other phenomena.

Indeed, the skeptic that you are referring supports this contention not with 
reason but with Darwinian authority; Popper would not approve.
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