BigShot wrote:(We *may* be able to prove evolution (as understood by the layman) is possible. It is utterly impossible to test, empirically, whether or not it DID happen - and fossils prove nothing other than the existence of fossils - but other than that caveat I think the above statement is solid.)
The question is,
why does the fossil record exist? Various explanations have been put forth throughout history to explain what fossils are and how they came to be where they were found. The fossil record goes way beyond proving it's own existence. As a
body of evidence it gives very strong credence to the theory of evolution through natural selection.
nickj wrote:Going to that extreme, it is actually impossible to prove anything...
- this is of course Nihilism, an intellectual dead-end.
nickj wrote: all you ever know is the results of your experiment. In fact, science doesn't really claim to prove anything ...
Kinda true actually. It's a common misconception that the aim of scientific method is to prove something true.
There is, however a big problem with this. It is impossible to prove something as true indefinitely.
Take the proposition "All swans are white". In order to prove the truth of this statement I would have to observe every single swan in the universe both past, present and future. This is of course impossible.
It
is possible to prove that a
falsehood can exist indefinitely.
For example: I walk along a river everyday. Each day I notice that there are white swans on the river. This leads me to formulate the hypothesis that 'all swans are white' (a 'truth'). Each day that I see another white swan, I feel that I have more evidence to support my hypothesis. The more evidence I have to support my hypothesis the more 'accurate' or 'true' I feel the hypothesis to be. However, all it takes is the sighting of
one black swan to falsify the hypothesis. It doesn't matter how many 100's of white swans I see after that, the hypothesis remains disproved.
Using this approach, the scientifc method (as espoused by Popper
et al) posits that once all falshoods have been removed, the only thing that can remain is truth.