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What, if any, is the role of the scientific method in the theory of evolution?

oneeye

Member
First, let me make it clear that I believe evolution is a fact. I am not a scientist and have a simple approach to life and the way I see it is that you do not need all the pieces of a puzzle to get the picture. I have read a lot of arguments that attempt to proof evolution as a lie, but it does not take a genius to spot the flaws in the reasoning of most of these attempts. However, I would like to know how scientists respond to those who say evolution cannot be proven as a fact by using the scientific method. Am I wrong to think that there is some truth in the statement? They claim that the process of evolution cannot be repeated by an independent party.

For me, the trail of evidence that evolution left behind is enough proof, but I would like to hear what the experts have to say about the role of the scientific method in the theory of evolution.
Please be kind when responding, I am not trying to make a point or begin an argument. All I want is to learn more.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Good question! When people speak of there being only one scientific method, they usually have in mind the so called "hypothetico-deductive method" that is so popular with text book authors. So far as I understand it, the HD method, though, is something of an idealized model that does not take into account much of how scientists actually proceed. In reality, there are numerous scientific methods, rather than just one. So what makes a method scientific? Near as I can figure out, scientists accept a method because (1) they can find nothing fatally wrong with it, and (2) it produces reliable and fruitful results. So, in partial answer to your question, there are various roles played by various methods in the theory of evolution.
 

oneeye

Member
Good question! When people speak of there being only one scientific method, they usually have in mind the so called "hypothetico-deductive method" that is so popular with text book authors. So far as I understand it, the HD method, though, is something of an idealized model that does not take into account much of how scientists actually proceed. In reality, there are numerous scientific methods, rather than just one. So what makes a method scientific? Near as I can figure out, scientists accept a method because (1) they can find nothing fatally wrong with it, and (2) it produces reliable and fruitful results. So, in partial answer to your question, there are various roles played by various methods in the theory of evolution.
Thanks for the reply. I agree with your quote from Kenko that uncertainty is precious. Maybe that is why I find a partial answer in the form of a view or opinion often more valuable and truthful than a full answer in the form of a cold hard fact.
 

YmirGF

Bodhisattva in Recovery
Good question! When people speak of there being only one scientific method, they usually have in mind the so called "hypothetico-deductive method" that is so popular with text book authors. So far as I understand it, the HD method, though, is something of an idealized model that does not take into account much of how scientists actually proceed. In reality, there are numerous scientific methods, rather than just one. So what makes a method scientific? Near as I can figure out, scientists accept a method because (1) they can find nothing fatally wrong with it, and (2) it produces reliable and fruitful results. So, in partial answer to your question, there are various roles played by various methods in the theory of evolution.
A very good reply, Phil.
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
An important thing is that the original hypothesis was proposed for the right reasons: conditions in nature suggested an idea. Animals appeared to have changed over time, so one hypothesis was put forward to explain it, the hypothesis that small changes could add over generations and that this was guided by fitness to survive.

The hypothesis was not put forward because of some kind of political or religious pressure. It was not pulled from the air. It came about because Darwin made a trip to the Galapagos Islands and observed the wildlife there.

It did not begin as a theory. It achieved the level of a working theory eventually after a lot of other people tested his ideas and found a lot of other facts worked well with it.
 

Zosimus

Active Member
Support or your claim or provide a source.
The fact that theories are not verifiable has often been overlooked. People often say of a theory that it is verified when some of the predictions derived from it have been verified. They may perhaps admit that the verification is not completely impeccable from a logical point of view, or that a statement can never be finally established by establishing some of its consequences. But they are apt to look upon such objections as due to somewhat unnecessary scruples. It is quite true, they say, and even trivial, that we cannot know for certain whether the sun will rise tomorrow; but this uncertainty may be neglected: the fact that theories may not only be improved but that they can also be falsified by new experiments presents to the scientist a serious possibility which may at any moment become actual; but never yet has a theory had to be regarded as falsified owing to the sudden breakdown of a wellconfirmed law. It never happens that old experiments one day yield new results. What happens is only that new experiments decide against an old theory. The old theory, even when it is superseded, often retains its validity as a kind of limiting case of the new theory; it still applies, at least with a high degree of approximation, in those cases in which it was successful before. In short, regularities which are directly testable by experiment do not change. Admittedly it is conceivable, or logically possible, that they might change; but this possibility is disregarded by empirical science and does not affect its methods. On the contrary, scientific method presupposes the immutability of natural processes, or the ‘principle of the uniformity of nature’. There is something to be said for the above argument, but it does not affect my thesis. It expresses the metaphysical faith in the existence of regularities in our world (a faith which I share, and without which practical action is hardly conceivable).*1 Yet the question before us— the question which makes the non-verifiability of theories significant in the present context—is on an altogether different plane. Consistently with my attitude towards other metaphysical questions, I abstain from arguing for or against faith in the existence of regularities in our world. But I shall try to show that the non-verifiability of theories is methodologically important. It is on this plane that I oppose the argument just advanced. I shall therefore take up as relevant only one of the points of this argument—the reference to the so-called ‘principle of the uniformity of nature’. This principle, it seems to me, expresses in a very superficial way an important methodological rule, and one which might be derived, with advantage, precisely from a consideration of the non-verifiability of theories.*2 Let us suppose that the sun will not rise tomorrow (and that we shall nevertheless continue to live, and also to pursue our scientific interests). Should such a thing occur, science would have to try to explain it, i.e. to derive it from laws. Existing theories would presumably require to be drastically revised. But the revised theories would not merely have to account for the new state of affairs: our older experiences would also have to be derivable from them. From the methodological point of view one sees that the principle of the uniformity of nature is here replaced by the postulate of the invariance of natural laws, with respect to both space and time. I think, therefore, that it would be a mistake to assert that natural regularities do not change. (This would be a kind of statement that can neither be argued against nor argued for.) What we should say is, rather, that it is part of our definition of natural laws if we postulate that they are to be invariant with respect to space and time; and also if we postulate that they are to have no exceptions. Thus from a methodological point of view, the possibility of falsifying a corroborated law is by no means without significance. It helps us to find out what we demand and expect from natural laws. And the ‘principle of the uniformity of nature’ can again be regarded as a metaphysical interpretation of a methodological rule—like its near relative, the ‘law of causality’. One attempt to replace metaphysical statements of this kind by principles of method leads to the ‘principle of induction’, supposed to govern the method of induction, and hence that of the verification of theories. But this attempt fails, for the principle of induction is itself metaphysical in character. As I have pointed out in section 1, the assumption that the principle of induction is empirical leads to an infinite regress.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Scientific theories can never be confirmed. Attempts to do so commit logical fallacies.
This is wrong.
They cannot be proven true, but they can be confirmed by experimentation, ie, tested & found consistent with a prediction.
 

Zosimus

Active Member
Confirmations have usefulness.
"Meaning" is a word I avoid because it has so many meanings.
I think it's very strange that you would say "Confirmations have usefulness" as opposed to "Confirmations are useful."

How exactly are confirmations useful?
 

gnostic

The Lost One
However, I would like to know how scientists respond to those who say evolution cannot be proven as a fact by using the scientific method.
Science does not make proofs, but it does seek and test evidence.
LuisDantas is right.

Words - such as "proof", "proving", "proven" - are more the language of mathematics than science, where solutions are found in solving complex mathematical equations. Proof is a mathematical solution.

Science is more in the department of refuting and verification, through method of observation, like "tests" or "experimentation", or "evidences".

If you can't refute or test any statement or any prediction, then statement/prediction is "unfalsifiable", and "unscientific".

Theoretical physics, like M-theory, superstring theory, multiverse model(s), etc, are largely untestable, but they can be solve by using mathematical equations, hence proofs. But until there are verifiable evidences to support these premises of any theoretical physics, they are not scientific facts.

Facts required evidences, not proofs.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
I think it's very strange that you would say "Confirmations have usefulness" as opposed to "Confirmations are useful."
How exactly are confirmations useful?
My response's grammar was designed to echo your post.
Consider gravitational lensing.
It is useful for observing things, eg, dark matter.

I think you & I have a very different view of science.
 

Zosimus

Active Member
LuisDantas is right.

Words - such as "proof", "proving", "proven" - are more the language of mathematics than science, where solutions are found in solving complex mathematical equations. Proof is a mathematical solution.

Science is more in the department of refuting and verification, through method of observation, like "tests" or "experimentation", or "evidences".

If you can't refute or test any statement or any prediction, then statement/prediction is "unfalsifiable", and "unscientific".

Theoretical physics, like M-theory, superstring theory, multiverse model(s), etc, are largely untestable, but they can be solve by using mathematical equations, hence proofs. But until there are verifiable evidences to support these premises of any theoretical physics, they are not scientific facts.

Facts required evidences, not proofs.
You are mixing incompatible philosophies. Verificationism and falsificationism are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
 

Zosimus

Active Member
My response's grammar was designed to echo your post.
Consider gravitational lensing.
It is useful for observing things, eg, dark matter.

I think you & I have a very different view of science.
Given that dark matter does not exist, it's hard to see how you propose to observe it.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
You are mixing incompatible philosophies. Verificationism and falsificationism are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
No, they aren't.

Falsification, relating to science, is examining any statement that is refutable. Refutability can only be objectively achieve through testing and experimentation.

And testing or testability is a mean of verification and refuting.

Falsification is far from being the opposite end to verification. They should hand-in-hand.

Falsifiability said:
Falsifiability or refutability of a statement, hypothesis, or theory is an inherent possibility to prove it to be false. A statement is called falsifiable if it is possible to conceive an observation or an argument which proves the statement in question to be false. In this sense, falsify is synonymous with nullify, meaning not "to commit fraud" but "show to be false". Some philosophers argue that science must be falsifiable.

For example, by the problem of induction, no number of confirming observations can verify a universal generalization, such as All swans are white, yet it is logically possible to falsify it by observing a single black swan. Thus, the term falsifiability is sometimes synonymous to testability.

So if a statement is untestable, then it unfalsifiable...and if it is unfalsifiable, it is unscientific.

Science, especially natural science (this would include physics, chemistry and biology), is not immutable.

Even in social science, nothing is immutable.
 
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