The Scientific Method–Problems for Darwinian Evolution
Science observes and analyzes the natural world in an orderly fashion, in order to come to conclusions about laws and processes that govern the world. The law of gravity is a good example, first explained in detail by Isaac Newton. In this post I will look at the scientific method at work in specific examples of false and true scientific hypotheses. The scientific method proceeds as follows:
Observations of the natural world are made.
Predictions to explain the observations are formulated in a hypothesis.
Experiments are undertaken to test the predictions, and verify or falsify the hypothesis.
The results of experiments (often repeated multiple times and in different ways) lead to conclusions about the validity of the hypothesis.
The Scientific Method may be illustrated by some historic examples, including Darwinian evolution, as follows below in this post.
A False Hypothesis
Phlogiston theory of combustion – how materials burn.
PREDICTION: Combustible materials burn by giving up a substance called phlogiston. Therefore combusted materials should weigh less after combustion than before.
EXPERIMENT: Heat a metal in “dephlogisticated air” which readily carries phlogiston away from the metal. Weigh the metal before and after heating.
RESULTS: Heated metal increases in weight. Something (oxygen) is added, but nothing taken away.
CONCLUSION: Phlogiston theory is false. Investigation of added weight of metal leads to discovery of oxygen (Lavoisier).
Phlogiston was a reasonable hypothesis, since the ashes of a wood fire weighed less than the original combustible material. So metal was used in experiment because it was easier to demonstrate the weight gain of the combusted material. The same would be true of wood if all the products of combustion (ashes and smoke) were collected. In researching this false theory of phlogiston, Lavoisier discovered that there was an added material that increased the weight of combusted metal. The increase in weight was due to oxygen, which is required for a fire to burn.
A True Hypothesis
Immunization theory – Louis Pasteur – immunity is observed in those recovering from an infectious disease.
PREDICTION: Inoculation with modified microorganisms protects against infection with virulent organisms.
EXPERIMENT: Pasteur inoculated some sheep with heat killed anthrax bacilli. And he then challenged both treated and untreated sheep with virulent anthrax bacilli.
RESULTS: Immunized sheep live. Untreated sheep die.
CONCLUSION: Vaccination protects against infectious disease.
Immunization has had worldwide success and saved countless lives from infectious diseases. What is the faith in this scientific experiment? It is the faith that anthrax bacilli are the same everywhere, that sheep are the same in their response to vaccine and to anthrax, and that the success of vaccination applies to everyone everywhere on the planet. The scientific faith expressed in every experiment is that the universe and everything in it is ordered in a predictable fashion (by an intelligent creator?) and therefore understandable by the human intellect.
An Uncertain Hypothesis
Evolution – Charles Darwin – A spectrum of life forms is observed in nature and is assumed to be a progressive sequence of development from simple to complex. Science does not want a divine creator or explanation.
PREDICTION: Life started by “spontaneous generation” from non-living material. Then gradual progressive development of life occurred through innumerable transitional forms acted upon by natural selection.
EXPERIMENT: Repeated experiments, those of Louis Pasteur most famous, had already demonstrated the impossibility of spontaneous generation. If progressive development of life forms over time, then search for transitional fossils and construct a plausible phylogeny (developmental tree) which demonstrates descent of one form of life from another.
RESULTS: ???
CONCLUSION: ???
Darwin himself wishfully opined about spontaneous generation, but could find no evidence for it. Furthermore, Darwin recognized in his classic, The Origin of Species, first published in 1859, that the fossil record did not provide the support he needed for his hypothesis, but he expressed faith that the geologic and fossil discoveries would ultimately support his hypothesis.
Unfortunately for Darwin, 120 years of vigorous searching for fossils has not clearly supported his hypothesis, as noted by the curator of geology at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. The museum houses about 20% of all fossil species in the world. The curator, David M. Raup, in a 1979 issue of the museum’s Bulletin, pp. 22-29, under the title Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology, explained that the fossil record thus far had not fulfilled Darwin’s hope.
“Darwin’s theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to evidence from fossils, and probably most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument that is made in favor of darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true. We must distinguish between the fact of evolution — defined as change in organisms over time — and the explanation of this change. Darwin’s contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was completely aware of this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn’t look the way he predicted it would and. as a result, he devoted a long section of his Origin of Species to an attempt to explain and rationalize the differences. There were several problems, but the principal one was that the geologic record did not then and still does not yield a finely graduated chain of slow and progressive evolution. In other words, there are not enough intermediates. There are very few cases where one can find a gradual transition from one species to another and very few cases where one can look at a part of the fossil record and actually see that organisms were improving in the sense of becoming better adapted. To emphasize this let me cite a couple of statements Darwin made in his Origin of Species: At one point he observed, innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?”: in another place he said, “why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory.’
“Darwin’s general solution to the incompatibility of fossil evidence and his theory was to say that the fossil record is a very incomplete one — that it is full of gaps, and that we have much to learn. In effect, he was saying that if the record were complete and if we had better knowledge of it. We would see the finely graduated chain that he predicted. And this was his main argument for downgrading the evidence from the fossil record.
“Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information – what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection. Also the major extinctions such as those of the dinosaurs and trilobites are still very puzzling.”
Raup, himself an evolutionist, who obviously assumes that the spectrum of life is a progressive developmental sequence from simple to complex, finds no support for Darwin’s gradual mechanism of evolution in the fossil record where Darwin hoped it would be. Therefore, if we apply Raup’s “experimental” observations by the scientific method to Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis , we have the following:
Evolution – Charles Darwin – explain origin of all life, reject notion of a creator.
PREDICTION: Gradual progressive development of life occurs through innumerable transitional forms acted upon by natural selection.
EXPERIMENT: Search for transitional fossils and construct a plausible phylogeny which demonstrates descent of one form of life from another.
RESULTS: Transitional fossils are not found, even after one-and-a-half centuries of diligent search.
CONCLUSION: Darwinian evolution does not explain the myriad life forms on planet earth.
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