(June 17, 2014 at 9:54 am)fr0d0 Wrote: If you're denying rational, which is what I think scientism is doing besides being self defeating (1), then I can't see how that position is tenableOh. That's a different definition than I was assuming. I don't think science needs to deal in that kind of absolute. But I think any discipline that purports to prove something needs to provide evidence that we can at least consider for discussion and that follows some sort of rules. And I think it's the rules part that makes the supernatural (or metaphysics, etc) impossible to verify.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
