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Re: Horns, Antlers, Tusks, and the way evolution works
Bruce Scott TOK (bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de)
3 Sep 1996 16:50:10 GMT
Bryant (mycol1@unm.edu) wrote:
[...]
: The dismissal of adapationist hypothesizing as "just-so story telling" is
: only justified when those doing so cite no supporting evidence and make
: no falsifiable predictions about their hypotheses. Dismissing working
: hypotheses (which necessarily come before tested hypotheses) is
: counter-productive.
In fact you could claim that the proponents of genetic drift or related
explanations are the ones doing the story telling, since these
explanations are the ones which are untestable (or at very least, not so
transparently testable). I am not an expert, but it does seem as if a
genetic-drift model could and should be made to be testable as well.
I don't like dismissing. In my mind, if someone is doing science, a
dismissal should come with a good reason (ie, a counterproposal
involving a testable scenario). Not a peronal belief, and definitely
not a personal attack. (These problems are just as prevalent in physics
as any other field...)
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott Congratulations to
bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de Ghada Shouaa,
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik Olympic heptathlon champion!
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