From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Mar 10 1997 - 12:17:11 MST
On Sun, 9 Mar 1997, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Evolution made specific, measurable, experimentally falsifiable
> explanations and quantitative predicitons
One of the most interesting predictions/controversies was that the
evolutionists claimed the age of the Earth was much more than the scant
million years the physicists (and geologists) at the time believed. The
physicists, led by Lord Kelvin, pointed out that if the planet was as old
as the biologists claimed it would have to be in order to fit their
evolution model and reasonable rates of species change, then it would have
cooled off through thermal conduction until it was entirely solid, which
it obviously wasn't the case (volcanoes). The evolutionists claimed
something must be heating the Earth.
This controversy was a real danger to evolution, but as the evolutionists
had expected, a reasonable energy source was found (radioactive decay)
and later evidence (from comparisions of drill cores and sediment
layering) supported their model. A quite fine case of how a scientific
controversy in the long run forced new research.
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Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
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