From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Date: Mon Mar 10 1997 - 00:40:30 MST
> Was Darwin's theory that man evolved from simpler organisms "proper
> science"? Can you measure the statistical significance of its outcomes?
Yes, absolutely. If it weren't, he'd be just another popular author
selling meaningless gobbledegook like _Fourth Turning_.
Evolution made specific, measurable, experimentally falsifiable
explanations and quantitative predicitons; and those explanations
have not been falsified (despite many lame attempts by creationists
and other nutcases) and many predictions came through.
Predictions were things like parallel evolution of similar life
forms on separate continents; measureable phenomena are things like
the simple fact that for every fossil in the record, there appears
a similar but not identical fossil in earlier records; the fact that
mathematical models of the time scales necessary for evolution do
not conflict with the time scales actually measured. The fact that
mathematical models with conditions similar to life do in fact
cause the same effect ("genetic algorithms"). The fact that matching
DNA sequences between species, especially organelle DNA, shows
common ancestry.
And the most important, measurable, quanitifiable statistic imaginable:
Of the millions of species of life on Earth ever studied, /not one/
has ever been found that is not explainable by evolution. Put one of
your social theories to that test: if you postulate that some age
was "the age of heroes" or some such nonsense, show me that /everyone/
on the planet at that time fit some definable profile.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:15 MST