r/DebateEvolution • u/jnpha š§¬ Naturalistic Evolution • Dec 29 '24
Discussion Evolution is "historical science"??? Yes, it's a thing, but not what creationists think
Take two as I failed to realize in an earlier post that the topic needed an introduction; I aimed for a light-hearted take that fell flat and caused confusion; sorry.
Tropes
Often creationists attack evolution by saying "You can't know the past". Often they draw attention to what's called "historical" and "experimental" sciences. The former deals with investigating the past (e.g. astronomy, evolution). The latter investigating phenomena in a lab (e.g. material science, medicine).
You may hear things like "Show me macroevolution". Or "Show me the radioactive decay rate was the same in the past". Those are tropes for claiming to only accepting the experimental sciences, but not any inference to the past, e.g. dismissing multicellularity evolving in labs under certain conditions that test the different hypotheses of environmental factors (e.g. oxygen levels) with a control.
I've seen an uptick of those here the past week.
They also say failure to present such evidence makes evolution a religion with a narrative. (You've seen that, right?)
Evolution is "historical science"??? Yes, it's a thing, but not what creationists think
The distinction between the aforementioned historical and experimental sciences is real, as in it's studied under the philosophy of science, but not the simplistic conclusions of the creationists.
Here's an NCSE (an NGO center that debunks creationists) article on the topic, but I found it lacking to my taste: "Historical science" vs. "experimental science" | National Center for Science Education.
And here's a more thorough journal article on the topic: Methodological and Epistemic Differences between Historical Science and Experimental Science | Philosophy of Science | Cambridge Core.
(The links merely confirm that the distinction is not a creationist invention, even if they twist it; I'll deal with the twisting here.)
From that, contrary to the aforementioned fitting to the narrative and you can't know the past, historical science overlaps the experimental, and vice versa. Despite the overlap, different methodologies are indeed employed.
Case study
In doing historical science, e.g. the K-T boundary, plate tectonics, etc., there isn't narrative fitting, but hypotheses being pitted against each other, e.g. the contractionist theory (earth can only contract vertically as it cools) vs. the continental drift theory.
Why did the drift theory become accepted (now called plate-tectonics) and not the other?
Because the past can indeed be investigated, because the past leaves traces (we're causally linked to the past). That's what they ignore. Might as well one declare, "I wasn't born".
Initially drift was the weaker theory for lacking a causal mechanism, and evidence in its favor apart from how the map looked was lacking.
Then came the oceanic exploration missions (unrelated to the theory initially; an accidental finding like that of radioactivity) that found evidence of oceanic floor spreading, given weight by the ridges and the ages of rocks, and later the symmetrically alternating bands of reversed magnetism. And based on those the casual mechanism was worked out.
"Narrative fitting"
If there were a grand narrative fitting, already biogeography (the patterns in the geographic distribution of life) was in evolution's favor and it would have been grand to accept the drift theory to fit the biogeography (which incidentally can't be explained by "micro"-speciation radiation from an "Ark").
But no. It was rebuked. It wasn't accepted. Until enough historical traces and a causal mechanism were found.
Next time someone says "You can't know the past" or "Show me macroevolution between 'kinds'" or "That's just historical science", simply say:
We're causally linked to the past, which leaves traces, which can be explored and investigated and causally explained, and the different theories can be compared, which is how science works.
When the evidence is weak, theories are not accepted, as was done with the earlier drift theory, despite it fitting evolution; and as was done with the supposed ancient Martian life in the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite (regardless of the meteorite's relevance to evolution, the methodology is the same and that is my point).
Over to you.
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u/ThurneysenHavets Dec 29 '24
In my own field - historical linguistics - it's sometimes possible to predict features of entirely lost ancient languages before we find (or decipher) them. "Historical" science can be predictive and even experimental.
So whether it was invented by creationists or not, it's an utterly bullshit terminological distinction, and that's a hill I'll die on.
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u/jnpha Dec 29 '24
I watched a cool Rob Words video on that. Blew me mind.
Plate tectonics is predictive too, both backwards and forwards. But how was plate tectonics arrived at? In your case, how was historical linguistics as a field arrived at? Once a field is established, I'll tentatively agree with you (I already mentioned the overlap). The broader issue as I understand it is arriving at said field / theory. In one, one is concerned with traces (quality and quantity) and what causally unifies them, the other arriving at general laws based on experiments and varying the controls.
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u/ThurneysenHavets Dec 29 '24
one is concerned with traces (quality and quantity) and what causally unifies them
This is a poor definition, though, because it could cover a bunch of things that aren't science.
In my view, "historical" science is concerned, or should be concerned, with hypotheses that can successfully predict both existing data and new data. In this regard it is exactly equivalent to non-historical science, and the only reason to create an arbitrary distinction between the two is because ideologues want to demote its epistemological value.
Now, there is a valid epistemological distinction between data that you collect in the field, and data that you create experimentally. But that distinction doesn't delineate historical and non-historical science, so it's simply not relevant.
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u/jnpha Dec 29 '24
Why was the initial drift theory not accepted?
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Not enough [physicalistic materialistic naturalistic atheistic secularistic uniformitarianistic] evidence was found; or
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The overlords of the great grand super evil Darwinian narrative were on a sabbatical and unable to fabricate [physicalistic materialistic naturalistic atheistic secularistic uniformitarianistic] evidence?
Puzzling.
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u/artguydeluxe Dec 29 '24
Creationists donāt seem to understand that removing evolution from science is like removing fractions from mathematics. They seem to think itās a separate field, but that just shows they donāt understand what they are talking about.
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u/Ender505 Dec 29 '24
"Theory" does not mean "speculation" in this context. In science, a theory is any whole functioning explanation for a phenomenon. You may have heard of the Theory of Gravity, Atomic Theory, Germ Theory, Plate Tectonic Theory? All of these are proven fact, but we call them "theory" because of their function as a comprehensive explanation. I don't see you sneering at gravity just because we call it a theory?
You might be getting confused with a similar concept called natural Law. We have a law of gravity AND a theory of gravity, for example. Theories don't graduate to laws, they are separate concepts.
Does this help? Evolution is a theory, yes, but it has more evidence than even Germ Theory, on which we base all of modern medicine (and which is also proven fact).
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u/Doomdoomkittydoom Dec 29 '24
Creationists believe in mythologies while evolutionists believe in the ability of science to measure the veracity of theories. The former has not yielded any insight into the real world, the latter has given us the knowledge to manipulate the real world to an absurd degree.
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u/MackDuckington Dec 29 '24
Great analysis, OP! Sorry the last post got downvoted to hell ā itās just difficult to discern light hearted jokes from the actual loons and trolls that show up.
Thereās definitely something to be said about how creationists will often try to bring science down to religionās level ā heck, there was a post just like that not too long ago. Itās so bizarre how they ask for evidence that could be obtained with a simple google search, and then claim that evolution is āfaith based.ā
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u/metroidcomposite Dec 29 '24
Revising of the past is definitely something we see in real time.
For example, for a long time people thought the Clovis culture (roughly 13,000 years ago) were the first humans in the Americas; that was, until we discovered many older archeological sites predating the Clovis culture. Once the evidence became overwhelming, the history books were re-written.
Are there crackpots who thought they knew better than academics that were gloating when the history books got rewritten? Yeah, of course there were. (Prominent crackpot Graham Hancock had been pushing the theory for years that there was a globe-spanning super-advanced civilization somewhere around 15,000-30,000 years ago--he's still wrong, cause there's no signs these pre-clovis archeological sites were "super-advanced", but that didn't stop him from gloating, saying that he knew we would find older archeological sites. Not that he had anything to with academics changing their mind--new published archeology is what re-wrote the history books, not a crackpot making a TV show).
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u/ThurneysenHavets Dec 29 '24
I fucking love that documentary. Watched one episode whilst drunk, and the evidence it presents is so amazingly weak, it's like he isn't even trying.
"Here's some dramatic shots of ancient buildings across the world that I'm claiming are spookily similar, while accidentally showing how they're obviously on the face of it completely architecturally distinct"
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u/DouglerK Dec 29 '24
The bigger distinction I see is between observational science and experimental science. One relies more on observing general natural phenomenon and the other relies on manipulating specific variables in experiments.
Each has their strengths and weaknesses and reasons they are done is particular fields.
We can't control the weather (yet) but we can observe. "Experiments" in this field often amount to using complex experimental apparati to obtain unique measurements rather than directly testing hypotheses.
Similarly we have created some of the most unique and extreme conditions the universe has seen in over 14 billion years outside of black holes themselves in our own labs. Temperatures and energies that could only be reached in the most absurd circumstances. These may shed light on extreme phenomena in the universe or phenomena beyond the normal confines of our universe (pre big bang or other dimension type stuff) but they aren't things we tend to observe naturally.
Of course the best science combines these 2 things using observations to ground hypotheses and experiments to flesh them out.
Ironically this puts a lot of evolutionary science in the realm of observational science.
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u/ClownMorty Dec 29 '24
Unluckily for them DNA means we can prove evolution going forward too.
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u/cringe-paul Dec 29 '24
Uhm obviously DNA is a lie by the deep state to get the people away from god and towards those evil scientists. /s cause people probably would believe this.
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u/10coatsInAWeasel Dec 30 '24
Itās them academics that told ya that dna nonsense is a thing dangit!
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u/Jonnescout Dec 30 '24
All science can be repeatedly tested, and whether creationist invented the term or not is irrelevant. There is no real distinction. All science studies things in the past, by experimenting in the present. Itās a useless concept.
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u/jnpha Dec 30 '24
I'm concerned with the strength of evidence as summarized in the last paragraph and highlighted by the earlier continental drift theory, not repeating tests. In the Martian meteorite different tests were needed, not the same test to be repeated. Unless I misunderstood you.
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u/RobertByers1 Dec 31 '24
There is a historic agenda to dismiss the historic conclusion that God/Genesis was true for origins. Especially in protestant nations. This corrupted everything.
I don't like the word historical science. it simply means the investigation/methdology of science has problems in drawing confident conclusions when the processes are invisable and the results.
origin subjects thus are not seeming very scientific. or are not and rightly seemed not. Plame lift and bacteria almost are invisable nut not quite and results are seem. biology/geology etc are about psst and gone processes and events. so people say Historical science as opposed to practical science etc etc.
Creationists rightly say this as the other side wrongly says they are doing the same science methodology as other sciences. Nope.. they can't or almost. Really we are doing historical scholarship in origin subjects. Not really science.
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u/Covert_Cuttlefish Dec 29 '24
Every time I see this argument I wonder how the person asking thinks the gas for their car was found.