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One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher

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Re: One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher

#11

Post by marcosdumay »

normalnorm wrote: post #5

Scientific theories are not "proven", that is not how science works. All theories are always and forever open to falsification. The scientific attitude is one of eternal doubt. "Proof" is something that only exists in the realm of pure math.

Yes, and on this case this is completely correct.

But evolutionary theories are so close to pure math (ie., they assume so little empirical knowledge) that it does happen once in a while to have some aspect of them proven on the literal sense.

Every scientific theory has this thing where a complex conclusion is proven to follow from a simpler set of hypothesis. It just tends to happen more often with Evolution.

Edit: On the old text it wasn't clear I agree on this case.

Re: One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher

#12

Post by sn41 »

keiferski wrote: post #9
normalnorm wrote: post #5

Scientific theories are not "proven", that is not how science works. All theories are always and forever open to falsification. The scientific attitude is one of eternal doubt. "Proof" is something that only exists in the realm of pure math.

Yes, thank you. I really wish scientists (and the general public) learned more about the fundamentals of their field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

Actually I wonder whether Karl Popper is considered very important by philosophers of science. I have had arguments with people who claim that Feyerabend has a better "approach" to science.

On the other hand, practicing scientists consider Popper's falsification one of the great unifying themes guiding scientific research.

Though perhaps not as well-known, Popper's approach towards falsification of probabilistic claims is also a great read.

Re: One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher

#13

Post by gus_massa »

marcosdumay wrote: post #11
normalnorm wrote: post #5

Scientific theories are not "proven", that is not how science works. All theories are always and forever open to falsification. The scientific attitude is one of eternal doubt. "Proof" is something that only exists in the realm of pure math.

Yes, and on this case this is completely correct. But evolutionary theories are so close to pure math (ie., they assume so little empirical knowledge) that it does happen once in a while to have some aspect of them proven on the literal sense. Every scientific theory has this thing where a complex conclusion is proven to follow from a simpler set of hypothesis. It just tends to happen more often with Evolution. Edit:…

This is about the comparison of terrestrial mammal species and marine mammal species, and how many subspecies each one has.

They have to model how the natural and artificial barriers in each environment produce subpopulations that are isolated enough to produce subspecies. And compare the simulations of the models with the data of real mammal species to see if they have similar results. This is not so close to pure math.

Re: One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher

#14

Post by BaronSamedi »

normalnorm wrote: post #5

Scientific theories are not "proven", that is not how science works. All theories are always and forever open to falsification. The scientific attitude is one of eternal doubt. "Proof" is something that only exists in the realm of pure math.

I think the reality is more subtle than this. Is, for example, the discovery of DNA going to be falsified? I don't think so. Is the notion that living organisms evolve going to be falsified? Again, I doubt it. The case of Newton and Einstein is relevant here. Einstein didn't "falsify" Newton but rather enriched our understanding of physics. A better model seems to be that scientific theories fit into a spectrum of certainty: a very few that are certain up to the highly speculative. That scientists need to be open-minded and maintain a level of skepticism is necessary, however, the extreme skepticism you appear to be suggesting is not warranted.

Re: One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher

#15

Post by 0thgen »

BaronSamedi wrote: post #14
normalnorm wrote: post #5

Scientific theories are not "proven", that is not how science works. All theories are always and forever open to falsification. The scientific attitude is one of eternal doubt. "Proof" is something that only exists in the realm of pure math.

I think the reality is more subtle than this. Is, for example, the discovery of DNA going to be falsified? I don't think so. Is the notion that living organisms evolve going to be falsified? Again, I doubt it. The case of Newton and Einstein is relevant here. Einstein didn't "falsify" Newton but rather enriched our understanding of physics. A better model seems to be that scientific theories fit into a spectrum of ce…

if scientific theories lie on a spectrum of certainty, then "prove" is at the maximum end of that spectrum

the "extreme skepticism" you claim the OP has seems more like a cautionary statement about avoiding the extreme assumption that a scientific theory can be "proven"

i think the OP is correct here; assuming evolutionary theory can be "proven" is a risky thing to say in a research article

Re: One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher

#16

Post by 0thgen »

gus_massa wrote: post #13
marcosdumay wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and on this case this is completely correct. But evolutionary theories are so close to pure math (ie., they assume so little empirical knowledge) that it does happen once in a while to have some aspect of them proven on the literal sense. Every scientific theory has this thing where a complex conclusion is proven to follow from a simpler set of hypothesis. It just tends to happen more often with Evolution. Edit:…

This is about the comparison of terrestrial mammal species and marine mammal species, and how many subspecies each one has. They have to model how the natural and artificial barriers in each environment produce subpopulations that are isolated enough to produce subspecies. And compare the simulations of the models with the data of real mammal species to see if they have similar results. This is not so close to pure m…

to follow up on gus_massa's point, it's not the "math" of an evolutionary thoery/agorithm that's being "proved" here; it's the assertion that it "proves" something about the environment it's trying to model

and saying you've "proved" something about natural events is probably bad practice

Re: One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher

#18

Post by vikramkr »

BaronSamedi wrote: post #14
normalnorm wrote: post #5

Scientific theories are not "proven", that is not how science works. All theories are always and forever open to falsification. The scientific attitude is one of eternal doubt. "Proof" is something that only exists in the realm of pure math.

I think the reality is more subtle than this. Is, for example, the discovery of DNA going to be falsified? I don't think so. Is the notion that living organisms evolve going to be falsified? Again, I doubt it. The case of Newton and Einstein is relevant here. Einstein didn't "falsify" Newton but rather enriched our understanding of physics. A better model seems to be that scientific theories fit into a spectrum of ce…

Dna could be falsified. It's incredibly low chance but it could. Just like the discovery of the bacteria that causes influenza was falsified once it became clear it's a virus. Just like the so called central dogma of DNA->RNA->protein turned out to be not so central or not so dogmatic.

And Einstein definitely falsified Newton with the famous experiment with the eclipse and with more correctly showing Mercury's orbit, both of which contradicted fundamentally with Newton. Newton is an extraordinary breakthrough, and still useful as a model, but our understanding is no longer Newtonian. And, finding a way to enrich our understanding of physics even further means finding ways to falsify parts of einstein and quantum mechanics to provide the foundation for an even deeper understanding.

Re: One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher

#19

Post by throwaway4787 »

normalnorm wrote: post #5

Scientific theories are not "proven", that is not how science works. All theories are always and forever open to falsification. The scientific attitude is one of eternal doubt. "Proof" is something that only exists in the realm of pure math.

The Popperian vision of science is good enough for students so that their naive mind can enter the field with idealistic perspectives but it's not how actual professionals practice it in real life. Oftentimes there are multiple theories competing, all with reasonable evidence, suggestions, and subscribers. The reason one theory prevails above another is not that the previous' subscribers were definitely convinced by the others' evidence, but simply that they died of old age. [0] The most egregious example is taxonomy: modern-day biologists have long switched to phylogenetics/cladistics to classify groups of individuals, while old school researchers still cling to traditional classification methods (sometimes using retired terms like "race").

In addition, different fields have different standards and methods for what qualified as evidence: for instance, mathematicians want nothing short of absolute proof - that's a given. But biologists are more from Missouri: they don't care that a theory is 'proven', they want to 'see' it [1]. For this reason they put very little trust in simulations no matter how advanced they are. On the other hand, they don't care that much about the mathematical rigor of the tools they use as long as it works out in the end and can be readily confirmed with something you can 'see'.

[0] https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works

[1] Think of it as a 'constructive' view of evidence: everything must be explicit. For instance, if you want to show that trait X is 'genetic' you need to point out an explicit genetic mechanism and show it in action in model organisms. If you want to show that mechanism Y happens in one's cells you ideally need some microscopy to show Y happening live before your eyes, etc.

Re: One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher

#20

Post by vikramkr »

sn41 wrote: post #12
keiferski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, thank you. I really wish scientists (and the general public) learned more about the fundamentals of their field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

Actually I wonder whether Karl Popper is considered very important by philosophers of science. I have had arguments with people who claim that Feyerabend has a better "approach" to science. On the other hand, practicing scientists consider Popper's falsification one of the great unifying themes guiding scientific research. Though perhaps not as well-known, Popper's approach towards falsification of probabilistic clai…

We discussed popper in some classes I took, the main theme for that for like an explanation yes it needs to be falsifiable, but also sometimes science is just "look I made a thing!" Or "look I found a thing!" And it's less relevant there. The unanimous belief accross different classes in the sciences I took was that yes, when we think about science we look at it from the perspective of falsification, but when we actually do science, we usually think of it as exploration until we have something we think falsifies the status quo or needs rigorous data collection to reject the mill. Nobody is really running an RNA sequencing experiment to evaluate the impacts of a drug on the rna transcriptome with falsification in mind (even if in a sense the null of "nothing changes" is what you're trying to falsify"). Psychologically it's just seen as some exploration to see what happens.
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