Re: Frosted Popper-Tarts (was Re: Underlying basis...)

[Philidor11@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/16/99 11:53:19 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
th81@umail.umd.edu writes:

<<  Enough observations providing exactly the same result and you would be 
obtuse not to accept the hypothesis as "true".  >>

Well, I have been watching the sun rise for a while.  Still tough to think 
I'm moving and not the sun.  I also wonder what kind of an experiment I 
personally could do to disprove my observation; important that Copernicus 
used Occam's Razor (yes! search program and parsimony in one sentence) to 
supercede Ptolemy's theory. 

To use some big type from a source:
PAST EVENTS CANNOT BE TESTED!!
http://149.152.32.5/Plants_Human/scimeth.html
Koning, Ross E. "The Scientific Method". Plant Physiology Website. 1994.
 
<<The one aspect of your hypothesis is important, though. It really must be 
rejectable. There must be a way to test the possible answer to try to make it 
fail...
The prediction is a formal way to put a hypothesis to a test. If you have 
carefully designed your hypothesis to be sure it is falsifiable, then you 
know precisely what to predict. The prediction has three parts: 
If my hypothesis is true... 
Then _____ should happen 
When _____ is manipulated 
The manipulation is what you knew would likely falsify your hypothesis.>>

The proof of a hypothesis is failing to disprove it.
As noted in a prior thread, the historical sciences have a disadvantage in 
not being able to run evolution over and over, to manipulate it.

So, as you note
<<As such, "proving" a statement where you cannot observe the whole (e.g., all
individuals of a species at all growth stages from the entirety of the span
of that species' duration on Earth) is impossible, and as such we are
operationally prevented from proof.  We can, however, disprove a statement.>>

Wouldn't you want to see full evolutionary progressions, including more than 
one species?
Combining swans observations, all we can do to test the hypothesis 'all swans 
are white' is wait for the appearance of a black swan because we've already 
looked at those currently available, and they're all white.
What do you call a hypothesis which cannot be falsified now, but which might 
be falsified in the future?  
(That's why I said:
>Because there are no ways of testing the hypothesis (prediction and 
experiment in the 'classic' scientific method), the hypothesis can be either 
true until disproven [finding the black swan] or in doubt until some way can 
be found of proving [testing] it. I was carrying over from the 'classic' 
definition the attitude that no hypothesis is true until you prove it, that 
it must be possible to falsify a hypothesis immediately.<)
Unresolved?
Okay, I am about to become much better acquainted with Karl Popper.  Hope 
he's friendly.  Carl Sagan I've seen.
Thanks!  (Do you really like pop-tarts??)