[FRIAM] Popper on Darwinism

[uǝlƃ ☤>$]

Right. Sorry if I painted you with that brush. I thought about adding an addendum of my own opinion, but thought it important to clarify Popper without muddying it with my own thoughts.

Now, I feel free to stir up the silt. *Some* concept (not nec. Popper's) of a metaphysical program should work well for those other efforts. As we've discussed, here, much of it dangles off of a scaffold built on the concept of consistency (writ large). A great deal of (pure?) mathematics is interesting in it's flabergasting feeling of how well it all hangs together. It's that same "seeking"/apophenic drive that we find in QAnon "researchers" and quantum woo fans. "It just all makes so much sense!" Similarly with people who are convicted of their own metaphysics. To my mind, if it makes that much sense, then it must be *false*, not true. The world is always and everywhere *messy*. But I'm clearly in the minority in that aesthetic.

As I tried to argue before, though, consistency is only half the justification for a metaphysical program. The other half is completeness ... which isn't given as high a priority amongst our rationality-obsessed brethren. Going back to the idea I broached to EricS recently about adjointness (in it's "weakly equivalent" sense), we can imagine a world where relations (or operations) are lossy, including the consequence/cause relation. And we can imagine an inference system (language?, algebra?, etc.) where relations are *not* lossy. Then regardless of how well that inference system hangs together (is consistent), there will be thing-a-ma-jigs in the world that it doesn't cover ... those interdigital parts that are ignored/abstracted by the inference system.

Natural selection *attempts* to meet both consistency and completeness with vast, persnickety, story-telling that comes off a bit like special pleading at times. But it does seem like a good program because it treats both. If the story-telling in Jung et al tried seriously to address both consistency and completeness, then it might work for them, too.

On 12/13/21 10:25 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> Thank you glen. This clarifies a lot and addresses Steve's question as well.
> 
> i included creationists with a great deal of trepidation, because i assumed it would prompt immediate rejection of the entire question. 
> 
> I do think there is some validity in considering the framework / testable scientific theory question with regard things like Whitehead's process philosophy, Jung's alchemy, some portion of the science-faith reconciliation efforts, and, of course, mysticism and altered states of consciousness.
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2021, at 9:44 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
>> The creationists have been peddling this rhetoric for a very long time. 
>> It's important to read Popper's recant and clarification. From Popper's 
>> 1978 paper "Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind":
>>
>> "However, Darwin's own most important contribution to the theory of 
>> evolution, his theory of natural selection, is difficult to test. There 
>> are some tests, even some experimental tests; and in some cases, such 
>> as the famous phenomenon known as "industrial melanism", we can observe 
>> natural selec- tion happening under our very eyes, as it were. 
>> Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection 
>> are hard to come by, much more so than tests of otherwise comparable 
>> theories in physics or chemistry.  The fact that the theory of natural 
>> selection is difficult to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and 
>> even some great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology. A 
>> tautology like "All tables are tables" is not, of course, test- able; 
>> nor has it any explanatory power. It is therefore most surprising to 
>> hear that some of the greatest contemporary Darwinists themselves 
>> formulate the theory in such a way that it amounts to the tautology 
>> that those organisms that leave most offspring leave most offspring. 
>> And C. H. Waddington even says somewhere (and he defends this view in 
>> other places) that "Natural selection . . . turns out ... to be a 
>> tautology". 6 However, he attributes at the same place to the theory an 
>> "enormous power ... of explanation". Since the explanatory power of a 
>> tautology is obviously zero, something must be wrong here.
>>
>> Yet similar passages can be found in the works of such great Darwinists 
>> as Ronald Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and George Gaylord Simpson; and 
>> others.
>>
>> I mention this problem because I too belong among the culprits. Influ- 
>> enced by what these authorities say, I have in the past described the 
>> theory as "almost tautological", 7 and I have tried to explain how the 
>> theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and 
>> yet of great scientific interest. My solution was that the doctrine of 
>> natural selection is a most suc- cessful metaphysical research 
>> programme. It raises detailed problems in many fields, and it tells us 
>> what we would expect of an acceptable solution of these problems.
>>
>> I still believe that natural selection works in this way as a research 
>> pro- gramme. Nevertheless, I have changed my mind about the testability 
>> and the logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am 
>> glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. My recantation may, 
>> I hope, contribute a little to the understanding of the status of 
>> natural selection. What is important is to realize the explanatory task 
>> of natural selection; and especially to realize what can be explained 
>> without the theory of natural selection."
>>
>>
>> On 12/13/21 8:32 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
>>> Dave, to clarify:
>>>
>>> What does Popper (or what do you) take to be the referent for the tag “Darwinism”.  The term has gone through so many hands with so many purposes, that I am hesitant to engage with only the term, without a fuller sense of what it stands for in the worldview of my interlocutor.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Eric
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Dec 13, 2021, at 10:33 AM, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm <mailto:profwest at fastmail.fm>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> “/Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program—a possible framework for testable scientific theories./”  
>>>>                       Karl Popper.
>>>>
>>>> I like this distinction but immediately wonder if it might provide some analytical / research means that could be applied to other "metaphysical research programs" — creationism for example, or the plethora of efforts, by scientists, to reconcile their faith with their science. Or, Newton's [and Jung's] (in)famous commitment to Egyptian Alchemy.
>>>>
>>>> Would it be possible to use the Tao de Ching or the Diamond Sutra or Whitehead's Process Philosophy (not a random selection, I group the three intentionally) as a metaphysical research program and derive some interesting and useful science?
>>>>
>>>> davew


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