Barry Arrington has a new post at UD:
where he objects to the discussion, particularly by thaumaturge, on an earlier thread:
The earlier thread is based on the accusation that Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins “believe the fundamental questions in biology have been settled and all that is left is to suss out the details.”
Suppose that I were to argue that
He makes some very interesting comments, and also this point, which I think is worth making:
I know for a fact that evolution cannot be falsified; it can only be replaced.
“Falsification” has become kind of shibboleth that in my view has outlived its usefulness as a criterioin for what is, or is not, science. We don’t actually proceed by what people usually mean by “falsification” in science, IMO, we proceed by replacing existing models with better ones (in that sense, of course, all models with a better fit to data than a previous model “falsify” the previous model – but that’s not what people usually mean). So I think Todd, as so often, is right here. Of course I think he is radically wrong about the age of the earth, but that’s another story!
