Cito di Pense wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:I would personally argue that the goal of science isn't to measure and describe, but ultimately to use those measurements and descriptions towards an explanatory end, but I know plenty of qualified scientists who disagree most robustly with that.

They disagree because explanation is lodged somewhere up one's filosofeezical arse. We demonstrate that something has been explained by engineering with it in such a way that it stands up on its own.

This thread is, to significant degree, a mocking of the hubris of explanation absent the use of tools. The tools that EE proponents are unable to take up are legion.

Essentially, that is my position too, except that I don't want to minimize the labourious hours of data collection that go into the formulation of explanations. In the absence of that accumulated evidence, those explanations are just ideas tossed out at random in ways more consistent with religious, supernatural, and alternative 'methodologies' rather than with science. The arbiter is still ultimately 'does the explanation work, bitch?' - does it correspond to further observations... but arriving at that explanation, or sorting through the moray of ungrounded explanations absent of any basis in data would massively slow the acquisition of knowledge.

Spearthrower wrote:The arbiter is still ultimately 'does the explanation work, bitch?' - does it correspond to further observations... but arriving at that explanation, or sorting through the moray of ungrounded explanations absent of any basis in data would massively slow the acquisition of knowledge.

Eel drink to that.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

Svartalf wrote:actually there's a mechanism to explain the added mass, it comes from meteorites.

Insufficient by a looooong stretch.

It's not just insufficient. It's insignificant.

Right, it's something like 100,000 tonnes a year on average.

So if we consider that over a million years that'd mean an increase of one hundred billion tonnes. Lots of added mass, but in comparison to Earth's mass of 5.9 sextillion tonnes; less than a billionth of a percent of added mass over 1 million years.

And of course, that's not even considering the ways that the Earth loses mass through hydrogen and helium escaping the atmosphere, and radioactive decay. Estimates for these suggest an average of the Earth losing somewhat more than 100,000 tonnes via these processes every year.

This is not something that can be just waved away; even if there was evidence strongly pointing to the Earth expanding, this discrepancy would need to be explained, and they can't expect the idea to be accepted without it being accounted for.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:The arbiter is still ultimately 'does the explanation work, bitch?' - does it correspond to further observations... but arriving at that explanation, or sorting through the moray of ungrounded explanations absent of any basis in data would massively slow the acquisition of knowledge.

Eel drink to that.

Spearthrower wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:The arbiter is still ultimately 'does the explanation work, bitch?' - does it correspond to further observations... but arriving at that explanation, or sorting through the moray of ungrounded explanations absent of any basis in data would massively slow the acquisition of knowledge.

Eel drink to that.

If you know a little street-Dutch, I'm just paling around.

Spearthrower wrote:

Hermit wrote:
So, not particularly interested in the fundamentals of science.

However, it is not contrary to the fundamentals of science to not produce explanatory theories. Measuring and describing are more fundamental, because they represent the methodological acquisition of data from which hypotheses and theories can be built.

Yes, measuring and describing is fundamental to science, but in the absence of testable explanations (i.e. theories) these activities fall short of being science. What makes science science is the process of making broad generalisations from specific observations. Those generalisations need to have an air of plausibility to say the least. Proposing an expanding earth without accounting where the mass for the earth's increased volume comes from makes the hypothesis profoundly implausible.

In the absence of showing any interest in explaining the mechanics of how such an event can come about - in fact seeing no need to come up with one - Gincko's support for the expanding earth proposal is fundamentally unscientific.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Hermit wrote:Our belief renders a mechanism that makes the occurrence of the event plausible irrelevant.

I just finished parsing this. Meanwhile, I split a gut.

That's because you skated past some important bits. I bolded them here:

Hermit wrote:

ginckgo wrote:I honestly don't care about the mechanism.

That's what believers in Noah's flood do: The flood happened even though we can't explain where all that water came from, and where it disappeared to. Our belief renders a mechanism that makes the occurrence of the event plausible irrelevant.

Hermit wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

Hermit wrote:
So, not particularly interested in the fundamentals of science.

However, it is not contrary to the fundamentals of science to not produce explanatory theories. Measuring and describing are more fundamental, because they represent the methodological acquisition of data from which hypotheses and theories can be built.

Yes, measuring and describing is fundamental to science, but in the absence of testable explanations (i.e. theories) these activities fall short of being science.

It's the methodological acquisition of knowledge. They might not be involved in theory driven science, but the collection of observations are still fundamental components of science. They're not involved with testable explanations; they're involved with collecting and collating the data which makes hypothesis formation possible.

Hermit wrote: What makes science science is the process of making broad generalisations from specific observations.

No, that's one part of science. For me, it's the most fertile part of science, but you can't just dismiss the vital work of the majority of scientists. Most employed scientists are not involved in hypothesis formation in the slightest. Most scientists involved in the production and experimentation components of science wouldn't be able to do so without the measurements and observations made by other scientists.

Hermit wrote: Those generalisations need to have an air of plausibility to say the least. Proposing an expanding earth without accounting where the mass for the earth's increased volume comes from makes the hypothesis profoundly implausible.

Yes, I agree as I already pointed out.

Hermit wrote:In the absence of showing any interest in explaining the mechanics of how such an event can come about - in fact seeing no need to come up with one - Gincko's support for the expanding earth proposal is fundamentally unscientific.

No, I cannot agree. While I may often have been charged with being disparaging about bean counters in science, I have never argued that their contributions aren't vital to the scientific endeavour.

Hermit wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Hermit wrote:Our belief renders a mechanism that makes the occurrence of the event plausible irrelevant.

I just finished parsing this. Meanwhile, I split a gut.

That's because you skated past some important bits. I bolded them here:

Hermit wrote:

ginckgo wrote:I honestly don't care about the mechanism.

That's what believers in Noah's flood do: The flood happened even though we can't explain where all that water came from, and where it disappeared to. Our belief renders a mechanism that makes the occurrence of the event plausible irrelevant.

It's also not true.

Believers in Noah's Flood have a mechanism: God.

Where did the water come from? God made it.
Where did it disappear to? God made it disappear.

You can't compare someone's position about being interested in direct observation as a means of querying the validity of something, to someone who's employing a religious belief to explain away the lack of evidence for their stated belief.

Let's put this into a hypothetical.

You are knocked unconscious. When you wake up you find yourself in a wholly alien environment where many physical rules you'd previously taken for granted apparently no longer operate in ways you're used to.

You want to find out how shit works. Do you:

a) formulate hypotheses and test them
b) make, record and collate observations


If a) - what exactly are you hypothesizing about?


Hypothesis formation is predicated on observations; the more, the better. We may rightly hold up people like Kepler as brilliant elucidators of knowledge, alighting on key explanatory frameworks that gave us insight into the workings of the universe. But the truth is that such people always stood on the shoulders of lesser known giants. Kepler's greatest contributions to science came after the death of his one-time mentor Tycho Brahe, who was one of history's great observational scientists, generating massive quantities of observed data, even designing improved tools to aid in the acquisition of that data. He was nowhere near as successful a scientist in terms of generating correct explanations, but it was his decades of patient astronomical observations meticulously recorded that freed Kepler from having to go through all that rigmarole personally, or else Kepler would have been too busy collating that evidence himself to have ever arrived at his own theories. Given that, in turn, Newton derived much of his work from Kepler's theories, one can justly say that without Brahe's hard work, neither of them would've been able to achieve what they did, and we'd all be poorer today as a result.

Observation comes first. Understanding cannot come first. Understanding comes as a result of meticulous, methodological observation.

Fenrir's reading. I'll pass over to you as I am sure you have a better way of explaining this!

Ha. It's 1:30 in the a em and i ain't gonna be rationally explain nuffink.

But in passing lots of excellent science has been and is done in areas where mechanisms are unknown. Mendelian genetics, for example, muddled along quite happily for quite some time before the unit of inheritance was identified and described.

It isn't the availability of known mechanism that makes something science and wrong science can be and has been extremely useful and accurate enough for many purposes, see epicycles for one.

Tis an interesting topic though. Nighty night all.

Awww I wanted someone else to take up this side of the argument so I can get back to being disparaging about butterfly collectors!

Spearthrower wrote:
Observation comes first. Understanding cannot come first. Understanding comes as a result of meticulous, methodological observation.

Indeed. Where do you think this sentence places observation?

Hermit wrote:What makes science science is the process of making broad generalisations from specific observations.

Edited to fix quote tags.

Hermit wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:
Observation comes first. Understanding cannot come first. Understanding comes as a result of meticulous, methodological observation.

Indeed. Where do you think this sentence places observation?

Hermit wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:What makes science science is the process of making broad generalisations from specific observations.

You're a fine one to be instructing us on how to parse a sentence. Remember, you wrote this:

Hermit wrote:Our belief renders a mechanism that makes the occurrence of the event plausible irrelevant.

Then you harried me because you claim I missed your point, which you're still trying to make:

Hermit wrote:
That's because you skated past some important bits.

You claim you wrote some important bits, objecting because somebody didn't care about the "mechanism". It's not mechanical, and that's the error that ginkgo introduced. Now everybody is chasing it.

Spearthrower wrote:Believers in Noah's Flood have a mechanism: God.

Where did the water come from? God made it.
Where did it disappear to? God made it disappear.

Open question: Is this sufficient to constitute a mechanism?

Thommo wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:Believers in Noah's Flood have a mechanism: God.

Where did the water come from? God made it.
Where did it disappear to? God made it disappear.

Open question: Is this sufficient to constitute a mechanism?

Filosofeezers talk about mechanism when they're not testing equipment. Which is always. It's not fucking mechanical.

Hermit wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

Hermit wrote:
So, not particularly interested in the fundamentals of science.

However, it is not contrary to the fundamentals of science to not produce explanatory theories. Measuring and describing are more fundamental, because they represent the methodological acquisition of data from which hypotheses and theories can be built.

Yes, measuring and describing is fundamental to science, but in the absence of testable explanations (i.e. theories) these activities fall short of being science.

If that's your view of how science must work, then you're quite naive about both the philosophy and the practicality of the scientific method.

Hermit wrote:What makes science science is the process of making broad generalisations from specific observations. Those generalisations need to have an air of plausibility to say the least. Proposing an expanding earth without accounting where the mass for the earth's increased volume comes from makes the hypothesis profoundly implausible.

You are correct that new hypotheses should have prior plausibility, and not a single mechanism proposed for EE has any prior plausibility. This is why most people dismiss it out of hand; and they are not wrong for doing so.

However, in this loooong discussion, I have found demand for a mechanism to be both unproductive, and personally boring. I am a geologist and palaeontologist. I know a shit ton about these topics, and therefore want to see EE proponents show me the evidence they use to support their hypothesis in the first place.

And that's my fundamental point: there is literally no point in discussing a mechanism for a process, if the evidence that that process is even happening does not exist. At this point, EE proponents have yet to proffer a single scrap of geological or palaeontological evidence that cannot be explained better by Plate Tectonic theory.

Hermit wrote:In the absence of showing any interest in explaining the mechanics of how such an event can come about - in fact seeing no need to come up with one - Gincko's support for the expanding earth proposal is fundamentally unscientific.

See above.

Also, see my history on here, and you would know I do not support EE

ginckgo wrote:You are correct that new hypotheses should have prior plausibility, and not a single mechanism proposed for EE has any prior plausibility. This is why most people dismiss it out of hand; and they are not wrong for doing so.

However, in this loooong discussion, I have found demand for a mechanism to be both unproductive, and personally boring. I am a geologist and palaeontologist. I know a shit ton about these topics, and therefore want to see EE proponents show me the evidence they use to support their hypothesis in the first place.

And that's my fundamental point: there is literally no point in discussing a mechanism for a process, if the evidence that that process is even happening does not exist. At this point, EE proponents have yet to proffer a single scrap of geological or palaeontological evidence that cannot be explained better by Plate Tectonic theory.

Hermit wrote:In the absence of showing any interest in explaining the mechanics of how such an event can come about - in fact seeing no need to come up with one - Gincko's support for the expanding earth proposal is fundamentally unscientific.

See above.

Also, see my history on here, and you would know I do not support EE

Well, not having read much of this thread, I have misread your recent posts I replied to in spectacular fashion. I took you for a proponent of the expanding earth theory. For that I apologise.

Hermit wrote:

ginckgo wrote:
Also, see my history on here, and you would know I do not support EE

Well, not having read much of this thread, I have misread your recent posts I replied to in spectacular fashion. I took you for a proponent of the expanding earth theory. For that I apologise.

It is a mindbogglingly long thread.

Ironically, I've actually learned a lot about new advances in Plate Tectonics from articles that EE proponents have posted - each article supports Plate Tectonics of course, but they interpret it as the opposite.

Feels a lot like arguing with Creationists when they post a scientific paper arguing it undermines evolution