6 ms·

> What's most incredible about Darwin is how readable and essential (and fundamentally correct) his two major treatises, Origin and Descent, have remained. Fun

> What's most incredible about Darwin is how readable and essential (and fundamentally correct) his two major treatises, Origin and Descent, have remained. Fundamentally correct? Evolution is neither demonstrable nor falsifiable, so it's not scientific. Disclaimer: I'm an atheist.

lazyasciiart 9y ago
What? Evolution can be observed in many scenarios, like fruit flies.
- Ngunyan 9y ago
  Have we observed fruit flies evolve? By evolve I mean macro evolution.
  - klodolph 9y ago
    The argument for micro/macro evolution is weak (what, exactly, is the line between micro and macro? why would one be different from the other? if a car can drive 10 miles and 100 miles, do you need a completely new theory to test if it can drive 1,000 miles?) and the distinction between laboratory observations and historical observations (fruit flies or bacteria in a lab versus fossil records) is not one that distinguishes science from not science, otherwise astronomy wouldn't be a science either, since you can't exactly put a star in a lab.
  - 24gttghh 9y ago
    Not fruit flies, but in Cetacea at least?[0] [0]http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347(14)00084-6 http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-...
  - stormking 9y ago
    The distinction between micro and macro evolution is a typical strawman. Everything one can't deny anymore without looking incredible stupid is called "microevolution", the rest "macroevolution". There are still many areas where we don't know the exact machanics, but evolution in itself is a fact.
    - tertius 9y ago
      I think he merely means the difference between an organism silencing/expressing or losing genetic material or an organism gaining genetic material. Both can alter function. One is observed the other not (according to those who argue micro/macro).
    - Ngunyan 9y ago
      I don't make a distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. I used other people's terms to make clear which part of this theory of evolution I want proven. Evolution's core claim is that man evolved from other organisms lower in the evolutionary tree. This is what I want proven in a scientific manner. How can it be a fact if one does not know how one-celled organisms managed to evolve into humans? You can call it a fact once the mechanism is well-understood. Until then, it's not yet a fact. Evolutionists arguments, if you're paying attention, are in fact circular.
  - pdonis 9y ago
    > Have we observed fruit flies evolve? Yes. > By evolve I mean macro evolution. There is no such thing as "micro" vs. "macro" evolution in evolutionary theory. There's just evolution. Species are not absolute boundaries; they are just convenient labels we use to group organisms for purposes of taxonomy.
    - Ngunyan 9y ago
      > There is no such thing as "micro" vs. "macro" evolution in evolutionary theory. There's just evolution. I agree. > Species are not absolute boundaries; they are just convenient labels we use to group organisms for purposes of taxonomy. I agree as well. As a matter of fact, this fuzzy definition of species is being exploited by evolutionists to "prove" macro-evolution is demonstrable. Going back to whether fruit flies evolve, what other different organism did they evolve into, different from a fruit fly?
    - oldandtired 9y ago
      Incorrect, the macro vs micro evolution concepts have been used by evolutionists since the late 1920's. Species is an ill defined concept and means different things in different contexts without the specific meaning used being defined. Lots of hand waving and no substance.
      - pdonis 9y ago
        > the macro vs micro evolution concepts have been used by evolutionists since the late 1920's They are used as concepts to organize things to make them easier to understand. They are not used to make actual predictions.
        oldandtired 9y ago
        I'll say it again. Ya canna ha ya cak en et it tu. In addition, what testable predictions has evolutionary theory made about existing organisms on this planet? Not interested in any prediction about things long past as you can modify any theory in any field to match up to such findings. What can evolutionary theory predict today that we can test as an outcome by going out and finding those predictions in living organisms today? That should be an easy question to answer if there is any veracity in the evolutionary model/theory.
bduerst 9y ago
It's scientific theory, like dark matter and gravity. As more is observed about the subject matter, it changes. That doesn't make it 'not scientific'.
- Ngunyan 9y ago
  A theory is an educated guess, which does not make it "fundamentally right". For a theory to be scientific, it needs to be falsifiable. Is it and in what way?
  - bduerst 9y ago
    A hypothesis is an educated guess. A scientific theory is a substantiated, unified explanation of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. You're splitting hairs on semantics to hold onto your untenable position that evolution is not scientific.
  - banku_brougham 9y ago
    I'll be impolite and say you don't know what you are talking about. And I will not wiki 'theory' for you.
    - Ngunyan 9y ago
      I take no offense. People feel threatened if their deep held beliefs (or beliefs they are invested in) are questioned.
      - banku_brougham 9y ago
        You imply equivalence between beliefs and science. No more needs to be said here.
  - yongjik 9y ago
    Every aspect of the theory of evolution is falsifiable. To falsify "Non-avian dinosaurs perished at the end of the Mesozoic Era", you just have to find a dinosaur fossil from a later era. Of course, even if we found a perfectly preserved fossil of a T-Rex from two million years ago, it likely won't falsify the whole theory of evolution, because there are simply too many evidences for that. It would be like saying "We found evidences that George Washington did not in fact die in 1799! The whole theory of the American Revolution is now in question, and the Aliens-did-it theory should be considered as good as the mainstream version!"
ufo 9y ago
I think you are making evolution sound less scientific than it is. One thing that is a certifiable fact is that species are not fixed. As shown by the fossil record, new species can show up and old species go extinct. And in a smaller time scale, the artificial selection that happens with domesticated plants and animals shows that there can be significant changes in species. Once we realize that some sort of evolution must be happening the question becomes to explain what mechanism is behind it. One of the initial hypothesis was the Lamarckian theory that animals can pass on to their offspring traits that they acquired via their lifestyle. This was eventually proven false when we found no evidence that this is not how genetics actually works. Darwin's theory of natural selection is still with us because it withstood the test of time, not because it is unfalsifiable. This is very clear if you read Darwin's books. He was aware that there are many things that would contradict his theory if they were true and he spends lots of chapters refuting them. A more modern source I like to point to is Talkorigin's list of 29 evidences for macroevolution. It covers many of the things known to Darwin and more recent developments such as genetics, molecular biology and new fossil finds. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
- banku_brougham 9y ago
  Thank you. Obscure notation does not grant value to a concept. They are different achievements, one of precision and general findings about the inert material universe, the other an idea the describes the conflagration of life itself.
- busyant 9y ago
  > Lamarckian theory that animals can pass on to their offspring traits that they acquired via their lifestyle. This was eventually proven false when we found no evidence that this is not how genetics actually works. Lamarckian theory might not be _completely_ false. There is definitely epigenetic inheritance, in which traits (reflecting the state of a parent) can be passed on without being explicitly encoded by nucleic acid. Whether epigenetic inheritance is a stable-multi-generational way of transferring traits is a little up in the air. But I wonder if Lamarck will get a modicum of vindication from the biology textbooks in the long run. That being said, epigenetic inheritance does not falsify evolution by mutation.
beojan 9y ago
> Fundamentally correct? Evolution is neither demonstrable nor falsifiable, so it's not scientific. Being 'scientific' is not required for an idea to be correct (nor does it imply the idea is correct). Though frankly, when they said "fundamentally correct" they meant "doesn't have any significant conflicts with our current knowledge of the subject".
- banku_brougham 9y ago
  Delete your account
  - dang 9y ago
    Personal attacks are not allowed on HN. We ban accounts that do this, so please read the rules and avoid doing it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Ngunyan 9y ago
  I agree with you on that one, a scientific idea does not necessarily imply its correct, and a correct idea may not be scientific. But what I'm saying it that evolution is neither scientific nor correct.
  - xenadu02 9y ago
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far you haven't presented any. "Macro-evolution" (to use your term) is the best most likely correct explanation for life according to the available evidence. Much like Newton and Einstein it is likely that any theory that "replaces" evolution will be a superset of Darwinian evolution rather than a replacement. And for the record there are examples of evolution occurring at the macro scale right now in the form of ring species where neighboring pairs produce viable offspring but more distant species don't. eg: A -> B -> C -> D where A & B occasionally mate and produce offspring that results in gene mixing between the subgroups, but A & D cannot produce viable offspring. If B or C goes extinct this will trigger speciation by breaking the chain, permanently stopping the mixing of genes between the now separate chains. Look at the greenish warbler or euphorbia tithymaloides. The Russian Domesticated Red Fox[1] is a great example of selective pressure at work and how it can produce dramatic changes in a species (though this is necessarily artificial in order to obtain results on human time scales). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox
acchow 9y ago
> Evolution is neither demonstrable nor falsifiable, so it's not scientific. "Evolution occurs" is science - it is reproducible and falsifiable. "We are the result of evolution and descended from single cell organisms" is not reproducible nor falsifiable. I would agree with your claim that this is not science.
pdonis 9y ago
> Evolution is neither demonstrable nor falsifiable Sure it is. It makes all kinds of testable predictions, which have been confirmed. One good example is the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which IIRC was predicted by (among others) Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin. If more people had listened to that prediction of evolutionary theory (which was obvious even when it was made and is even more obvious today, when we can sequence bacterial DNA and see it changing in response to selection pressures imposed by the use of different antibiotics), we would not have the major problem with resistant bacteria that we have today.
snovv_crash 9y ago
> Evolution is neither demonstrable nor falsifiable, so it's not scientific. I think you need to look into something known as a "fluctuation assay". Basically a microbiologist grows a batch of bacteria from a single cell, for some number of generations, then puts them on a petri dish under a low dosage of antibiotics, in order to kill those which have not evolved some immunity during previous generations. The survival percentage has been shown to correlate with genetic mutation rate of the bacteria strain in question, which was tested by directly sequencing the genomes. If they didn't correlate that would be a falsification of evolution.

lazyasciiart 9y ago

What? Evolution can be observed in many scenarios, like fruit flies.

Ngunyan 9y ago
Have we observed fruit flies evolve? By evolve I mean macro evolution.
- klodolph 9y ago
  The argument for micro/macro evolution is weak (what, exactly, is the line between micro and macro? why would one be different from the other? if a car can drive 10 miles and 100 miles, do you need a completely new theory to test if it can drive 1,000 miles?) and the distinction between laboratory observations and historical observations (fruit flies or bacteria in a lab versus fossil records) is not one that distinguishes science from not science, otherwise astronomy wouldn't be a science either, since you can't exactly put a star in a lab.
- 24gttghh 9y ago
  Not fruit flies, but in Cetacea at least?[0] [0]http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347(14)00084-6 http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-...
- stormking 9y ago
  The distinction between micro and macro evolution is a typical strawman. Everything one can't deny anymore without looking incredible stupid is called "microevolution", the rest "macroevolution". There are still many areas where we don't know the exact machanics, but evolution in itself is a fact.
  - tertius 9y ago
    I think he merely means the difference between an organism silencing/expressing or losing genetic material or an organism gaining genetic material. Both can alter function. One is observed the other not (according to those who argue micro/macro).
  - Ngunyan 9y ago
    I don't make a distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. I used other people's terms to make clear which part of this theory of evolution I want proven. Evolution's core claim is that man evolved from other organisms lower in the evolutionary tree. This is what I want proven in a scientific manner. How can it be a fact if one does not know how one-celled organisms managed to evolve into humans? You can call it a fact once the mechanism is well-understood. Until then, it's not yet a fact. Evolutionists arguments, if you're paying attention, are in fact circular.
- pdonis 9y ago
  > Have we observed fruit flies evolve? Yes. > By evolve I mean macro evolution. There is no such thing as "micro" vs. "macro" evolution in evolutionary theory. There's just evolution. Species are not absolute boundaries; they are just convenient labels we use to group organisms for purposes of taxonomy.
  - Ngunyan 9y ago
    > There is no such thing as "micro" vs. "macro" evolution in evolutionary theory. There's just evolution. I agree. > Species are not absolute boundaries; they are just convenient labels we use to group organisms for purposes of taxonomy. I agree as well. As a matter of fact, this fuzzy definition of species is being exploited by evolutionists to "prove" macro-evolution is demonstrable. Going back to whether fruit flies evolve, what other different organism did they evolve into, different from a fruit fly?
  - oldandtired 9y ago
    Incorrect, the macro vs micro evolution concepts have been used by evolutionists since the late 1920's. Species is an ill defined concept and means different things in different contexts without the specific meaning used being defined. Lots of hand waving and no substance.
    - pdonis 9y ago
      > the macro vs micro evolution concepts have been used by evolutionists since the late 1920's They are used as concepts to organize things to make them easier to understand. They are not used to make actual predictions.
      - oldandtired 9y ago
        I'll say it again. Ya canna ha ya cak en et it tu. In addition, what testable predictions has evolutionary theory made about existing organisms on this planet? Not interested in any prediction about things long past as you can modify any theory in any field to match up to such findings. What can evolutionary theory predict today that we can test as an outcome by going out and finding those predictions in living organisms today? That should be an easy question to answer if there is any veracity in the evolutionary model/theory.

bduerst 9y ago

It's scientific theory, like dark matter and gravity. As more is observed about the subject matter, it changes. That doesn't make it 'not scientific'.

Ngunyan 9y ago
A theory is an educated guess, which does not make it "fundamentally right". For a theory to be scientific, it needs to be falsifiable. Is it and in what way?
- bduerst 9y ago
  A hypothesis is an educated guess. A scientific theory is a substantiated, unified explanation of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. You're splitting hairs on semantics to hold onto your untenable position that evolution is not scientific.
- banku_brougham 9y ago
  I'll be impolite and say you don't know what you are talking about. And I will not wiki 'theory' for you.
  - Ngunyan 9y ago
    I take no offense. People feel threatened if their deep held beliefs (or beliefs they are invested in) are questioned.
    - banku_brougham 9y ago
      You imply equivalence between beliefs and science. No more needs to be said here.
- yongjik 9y ago
  Every aspect of the theory of evolution is falsifiable. To falsify "Non-avian dinosaurs perished at the end of the Mesozoic Era", you just have to find a dinosaur fossil from a later era. Of course, even if we found a perfectly preserved fossil of a T-Rex from two million years ago, it likely won't falsify the whole theory of evolution, because there are simply too many evidences for that. It would be like saying "We found evidences that George Washington did not in fact die in 1799! The whole theory of the American Revolution is now in question, and the Aliens-did-it theory should be considered as good as the mainstream version!"

ufo 9y ago

I think you are making evolution sound less scientific than it is. One thing that is a certifiable fact is that species are not fixed. As shown by the fossil record, new species can show up and old species go extinct. And in a smaller time scale, the artificial selection that happens with domesticated plants and animals shows that there can be significant changes in species. Once we realize that some sort of evolution must be happening the question becomes to explain what mechanism is behind it. One of the initial hypothesis was the Lamarckian theory that animals can pass on to their offspring traits that they acquired via their lifestyle. This was eventually proven false when we found no evidence that this is not how genetics actually works. Darwin's theory of natural selection is still with us because it withstood the test of time, not because it is unfalsifiable. This is very clear if you read Darwin's books. He was aware that there are many things that would contradict his theory if they were true and he spends lots of chapters refuting them. A more modern source I like to point to is Talkorigin's list of 29 evidences for macroevolution. It covers many of the things known to Darwin and more recent developments such as genetics, molecular biology and new fossil finds. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

banku_brougham 9y ago
Thank you. Obscure notation does not grant value to a concept. They are different achievements, one of precision and general findings about the inert material universe, the other an idea the describes the conflagration of life itself.
busyant 9y ago
> Lamarckian theory that animals can pass on to their offspring traits that they acquired via their lifestyle. This was eventually proven false when we found no evidence that this is not how genetics actually works. Lamarckian theory might not be _completely_ false. There is definitely epigenetic inheritance, in which traits (reflecting the state of a parent) can be passed on without being explicitly encoded by nucleic acid. Whether epigenetic inheritance is a stable-multi-generational way of transferring traits is a little up in the air. But I wonder if Lamarck will get a modicum of vindication from the biology textbooks in the long run. That being said, epigenetic inheritance does not falsify evolution by mutation.

beojan 9y ago

> Fundamentally correct? Evolution is neither demonstrable nor falsifiable, so it's not scientific. Being 'scientific' is not required for an idea to be correct (nor does it imply the idea is correct). Though frankly, when they said "fundamentally correct" they meant "doesn't have any significant conflicts with our current knowledge of the subject".

banku_brougham 9y ago
Delete your account
- dang 9y ago
  Personal attacks are not allowed on HN. We ban accounts that do this, so please read the rules and avoid doing it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Ngunyan 9y ago
I agree with you on that one, a scientific idea does not necessarily imply its correct, and a correct idea may not be scientific. But what I'm saying it that evolution is neither scientific nor correct.
- xenadu02 9y ago
  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far you haven't presented any. "Macro-evolution" (to use your term) is the best most likely correct explanation for life according to the available evidence. Much like Newton and Einstein it is likely that any theory that "replaces" evolution will be a superset of Darwinian evolution rather than a replacement. And for the record there are examples of evolution occurring at the macro scale right now in the form of ring species where neighboring pairs produce viable offspring but more distant species don't. eg: A -> B -> C -> D where A & B occasionally mate and produce offspring that results in gene mixing between the subgroups, but A & D cannot produce viable offspring. If B or C goes extinct this will trigger speciation by breaking the chain, permanently stopping the mixing of genes between the now separate chains. Look at the greenish warbler or euphorbia tithymaloides. The Russian Domesticated Red Fox[1] is a great example of selective pressure at work and how it can produce dramatic changes in a species (though this is necessarily artificial in order to obtain results on human time scales). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox

acchow 9y ago

> Evolution is neither demonstrable nor falsifiable, so it's not scientific. "Evolution occurs" is science - it is reproducible and falsifiable. "We are the result of evolution and descended from single cell organisms" is not reproducible nor falsifiable. I would agree with your claim that this is not science.

pdonis 9y ago

> Evolution is neither demonstrable nor falsifiable Sure it is. It makes all kinds of testable predictions, which have been confirmed. One good example is the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which IIRC was predicted by (among others) Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin. If more people had listened to that prediction of evolutionary theory (which was obvious even when it was made and is even more obvious today, when we can sequence bacterial DNA and see it changing in response to selection pressures imposed by the use of different antibiotics), we would not have the major problem with resistant bacteria that we have today.

snovv_crash 9y ago

> Evolution is neither demonstrable nor falsifiable, so it's not scientific. I think you need to look into something known as a "fluctuation assay". Basically a microbiologist grows a batch of bacteria from a single cell, for some number of generations, then puts them on a petri dish under a low dosage of antibiotics, in order to kill those which have not evolved some immunity during previous generations. The survival percentage has been shown to correlate with genetic mutation rate of the bacteria strain in question, which was tested by directly sequencing the genomes. If they didn't correlate that would be a falsification of evolution.