With the historical sciences, therefore, less weight can be put on "best explanations" using "the least amount of parameters" if there is no indication that they have any more primary utility than alternative explanations. When any, even trivial, new piece of data can come to bear on the paradigm, a differential diagnosis on how alternative paradigms may fare with primary utility is advised with Marcomony.
With the dismal sciences, rules with general application can be reliable rules of thumb, while more mathematically accurate rules must complexify to the point of defining the complete context in which the rule or law will work.
These are in some way contradictory to the supposed benefits of parsimony. There can still be similar benefits to simplification, but they are much more about "rinse and repeat" than the "set and forget" principles that work so well with physics laws such as Relativistic mechanics, and Maxwell's equations to randomly select some fixed laws which should require an extreme bar of disproof to reconsider them.
Something in the historical sciences, such as "selection on random mutations" being sufficient should be easy come easy go. There are a number of naturalistic alternatives, and lots of new data.
There are a number of naturalistic alternatives, and lots of new data. I shouldn't pick this scab, but I have nagged you a lot to provide these alternatives and you haven't provided any mechanistically credible ones. I still don't get quite what is driving your opposition to selection on random mutations.
ReplyDeleteHi Chris,
ReplyDeleteThis concept kind of feeds off part of your book review of God's Undertaker. In that review you take Lennox to task over the false dichotomy between special creation and infinite parallel universes to explain a finely balanced universe. You mentioned that it was trivial to think of a myriad of plausible alternatives, thus the dichotomy is false. Until I read your review that time, I would not have considered the dichotomy false. Similarly, I do not perceive any problem with thinking a myriad of plausible alternatives to selection on random mutations - That is if your point about the Lennox's false dichotomy is similarly plausible. In fact if you tell me those alternatives to Lennox's dichotomy, I may be able to build alternatives to selection from random mutation.
Anyway, I thought I had demonstrated that evolution was way too sophisticated to be "just
That"
ReplyDeleteAnd that other smart ways involving sexual selection and group selection and other non-random elements would be required to explain that.
It's not my intention to pursue this particular point in this book, but I am convinced that there is no primary utility in this view of evolution. If you can demonstrate primary utility to my satisfaction, I will stand corrected.
ReplyDelete