[Quotes] [Science, #1, #3, #4]
"More precisely, the essential characteristics of science are: (1) It is guided by natural law; (2) It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law; (3) It is testable against the empirical world; (4) Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and (5) It is falsifiable." (Overton W.R., "United States District Court Opinion: McLean v. Arkansas, January 5, 1982," in Ruse M., ed., "But is it Science?: The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy," Prometheus: Amherst NY, 1996, p. 318)
[top]"Molecular biology has been built upon the assumptions of physics, chemistry and the other so-called 'hard' sciences: laws of great generality and perfect stability do exist in nature; living things are governed by these laws. Yet the study of natural selection stands outside this framework, even though many students of the process begin as scientists and use the tools of various scientific disciplines. Students of natural selection can have no hope and no wish for eternal laws. Physicists can predict the next solar eclipse, but no one can predict the next species. Trained as scientists but thinking like historians, students or natural selection are pleased to accept the contingent aspects of current and past life, the certainty that we will not come this way again." (Pollack R., "Genes and history," New Scientist, Vol 127, No. 1733, 8 September 1990, pp.44-45, p.44).
[top]"Certainly science has moved forward. But when science progresses, it often opens vaster mysteries to our gaze. Moreover, science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed. Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned." (Eiseley L.C., "The Firmament of Time," The Scientific Book Club: London, 1960, p.5)
[ top]"Multiple hypotheses should be proposed whenever possible. Proposing alternative explanations that can answer a question is good science. If we operate with a single hypothesis, especially one we favor, we may direct our investigation toward a hunt for evidence in support of this hypothesis." (Campbell N.A., Reece J.B. & Mitchell L.G., "Biology," [1987], Benjamin/Cummings: Menlo Park CA, Fifth Edition, 1999, p.14).
[top]"Most scientific theories, however, are ephemeral. Exceptions will likely be found that invalidate a theory in one or more of its tenets. These can then stimulate a new round of research leading either to a more comprehensive theory or perhaps to a more restrictive (i.e., more precisely defined) theory. Nothing is ever completely finished in science; the search for better theories is endless. The interpretation of a scientific experiment should not be extended beyond the limits of the available data. In the building of theories, however, scientists propose general principles by extrapolation beyond available data. When former theories have been shown to be inadequate, scientists should be prepared to relinquish the old and embrace the new in their never-ending search for better solutions. It is unscientific, therefore, to claim to have "proof of the truth" when all that scientific methodology can provide is evidence in support of a theory." (Stansfield W.D.,"The Science of Evolution," [1977], Macmillan: New York, 1983, Eighth Printing, pp.8-9).
[top]"The purpose of science is not to find "facts" or discover "truth," but rather to formulate and use theories in order to solve problems and ultimately to organize, unify, and explain all the material phenomena of the universe. Scientists attempt to avoid the use of "fact, "proof," and "truth," because these words could easily be interpreted to connote absolutes. Nothing in science is deemed absolute. Science deals only with theories or relative "truth,"-a temporary correctness so far as can be ascertained by the rational mind at the present time." (Stansfield W.D.,"The Science of Evolution," [1977], Macmillan: New York NY, 1983, Eighth Printing, p.7).
[top]"In some instances, the evidence for evolution is meager and/or equivocal. Creationists focus attention on any tendency to acceptance of such evidence carte blanche. Perhaps the greatest contribution creationists are currently making to science is their recognition of "creeping dogmatism" in the science of evolution Through their efforts, it is likely that science textbooks in California will have to retreat from such dogmatic statements as "Life began in the primordial sea at least three billion years ago." An acceptable revision of this concept might be "Most scientists have interpreted from the fossil record that life began in the primordial sea at estimates exceeding three billion years ago." This is as it should be. Absolutes have no place in science. The scientist should carefully avoid dogmatic statements, couching all conclusions in relativistic terms. When the scientist fails to do this, other members of the scientific community must be ready to correct such errors. If evolutionists do not keep their own house in order, the creationists stand ready to attack their veracity." (Stansfield W.D.,"The Science of Evolution," [1977], Macmillan: New York NY, 1983, Eighth Printing, p.11).
[top]"As noted in the Preface, one often sees it said that `evolution is not a fact, but a theory.' Is this the essence of my claim? Not really! Indeed, I suggest that this wise-sounding statement is confused to the point of falsity: it almost certainly is if, without regard for cause, one means no more by `evolution' than the claim that all organisms developed naturally from primitive beginnings. Evolution is a fact, fact, FACT!" (Ruse M., "Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies," [1982], Addison-Wesley: Reading MA, 1983, Third Printing, p.58. Emphasis Ruse's).
[top]"It is also worth pondering why there has been general and unquestioned acceptance of Kettlewell's work. Perhaps such powerful stories discourage close scrutiny. Moreover, in evolutionary biology there is little payoff in repeating other people's experiments, and, unlike molecular biology, our field is not self-correcting because few studies depend on the accuracy of earlier ones. Finally, teachers such as myself often neglect original papers in favour of shorter textbook summaries, which bleach the blemishes from complicated experiments." (Coyne J.A., "Not black and white," review of Majerus M.E.N., "Melanism: Evolution in Action," Oxford University Press, 1998, in Nature Vol. 396, No. 6706, 5 November 1998, pp.35-36, p.36).
[top]"FIRST, it is one of the major paradoxes of the history of science, that the Darwinian theory, speculative as it must be by the very nature of its subject-matter, has been held up as a model of simple Baconian induction through the patient accumulation of facts. ... No, the species theory, like most great forward steps in science, was a triumph of scientific imagination rather than of fact-collecting. Dr. Himmelfarb shows us plainly the two leaps of imagination through which Darwin's theory took shape: first in the sketch of 1837, where he speaks of adaptation perpetuated through generation, and secondly in the notes of 1842 and 1844, which follow his reading of Malthus on population, the text which by his own account suggested to him the concepts of struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, the essential agents of natural selection. These steps once made, the new conceptual scheme took over, and the task of the Origin was to amplify the evidence in its support- evidence gleaned everyhow and everywhere-with the passion of genius ... and to assimilate within its all- enclosing scope whatever evidence might appear at first sight to conflict with it. The method is one of imagination, of extrapolation from a few facts to many more inferred realities seen in terms of the imagined scheme, and proof of these realities by the exclusion of other possibilities." (Grene M., "The Faith of Darwinism," Encounter, Vol. 74, November 1959, p.51. Emphasis in original)..
[top]"According to the modern theory (called neo-Darwinism), changes occur in organisms by mutations of genes. This leads to the existence of variation amongst individuals. Some of these individuals may survive more successfully than others (called natural selection), thus producing more offspring with their new features. Gradually these new features will extend throughout the population. If, however, the population is isolated from others differences cannot spread, and over a period of time two varieties come to exist. Only small changes to organisms have been actually observed to occur by this mechanism. e.g. Industrial melanism, resistance to antibiotics and insecticides. Evidence for larger changes must be deduced from the fossil record. ("evolution," in Heffernan D.A., "The Australian Biology Dictionary," [1987], Addison Wesley Longman Australia: Melbourne, Australia, 1996, reprint, p.87).
[top]"Evolution, at least in the sense that Darwin speaks of it, cannot be detected within the lifetime of a single observer." (Kitts D.B., "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, Vol. 28, September 1974, p.466).
[top]"The opposite truth has been affirmed by innumerable cases of measurable evolution at this minimal scale-but, to be visible at all over so short a span, evolution must be far too rapid (and transient) to serve as the basis for major transformations in geological time. Hence, the "paradox of the visibly irrelevant"-or, if you can see it at all, it's too fast to matter in the long run." (Gould S.J., "The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant," Natural History, December 1997/January 1998, Vol. 106, No. 11, p.15).
[top]"Moreover, and with complete generality-the "paradox of the visibly irrelevant" in my title we may say that any change measurable at all over the few years of an ordinary scientific study must be occurring far too rapidly to represent ordinary rates of evolution in the fossil record. The culprit of this paradox, as so often, is the vastness of time (a concept that we can appreciate "in our heads" but seem quite unable to get into the guts of our intuition). The key principle, however ironic, requires such a visceral understanding of earthly time: if evolution is fast enough to be discerned by our instruments in just a few years-that is, substantial enough to stand out as a genuine and directional effect above the random fluctuations of nature's stable variation and our inevitable errors of measurement-then such evolution is far too fast to serve as an atom of steady incrementation in a paleontological trend. Thus, if we can measure it at all (in a few years), it is too powerful to be the stuff of life's history. If large-scale evolution proceeded by stacking Trinidad guppy rates end to end, any evolutionary trend would be completed in a geological moment, not over the many million years actually observed. "Our face from fish to man," to cite the title of a famous old account of evolution for popular audiences, would run its course within a single geological formation, not over more than 400 million years, as our fossil record demonstrates." (Gould S.J., "The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant," Natural History, December 1997/January 1998, Vol. 106, No. 11, p.64).
[top]"These shortest-term studies are elegant and important, but they cannot represent the general mode for building patterns in the history of life. The reason strikes most people as deeply paradoxical, even funny-but the argument truly cannot be gainsaid. Evolutionary rates of a moment, as measured for guppies and lizards, are vastly too rapid to represent the general modes of change that build life's history through geological ages. ... These measured changes over years and decades are too fast by several orders of magnitude to build the history of life by simple cumulation. Reznick's guppy rates range from 3,700 to 45,000 darwins (a standard metric for evolution, expressed as change in units of standard deviation-a measure of variation around the mean value of a trait in a population-per million years). By contrast, rates for major trends in the fossil record generally range from 0.1 to 1.0 darwins. Reznick himself states that "the estimated rates [for guppies] are...four to seven orders of magnitude greater than those observed in the fossil record" (that is, ten thousand to ten million times faster!)." (Gould S.J., "The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant,"
[top]"These evolutionary happenings are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible. It is as impossible to turn a land vertebrate into a fish as it is to effect the reverse transformation. The applicability of the experimental method to the study of such unique historical processes is severely restricted before all else by the time intervals involved, which far exceed the lifetime of any human experimenter. " (Dobzhansky T.G., "On Methods of Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology," Part I, "Biology," American Scientist, Vol. 45, No. 5, December 1957, p.388).
[top]* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists.
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