Empirical science is an equal opportunity educator. It ignores no segment of the population to drive across its central theme as the repository of all human knowledge, there is nothing outside the realm of empirical science that has any validity, and, well, basically, empirical science is the new god, with a small "g" of course. In column 03-06 we were treated to that ageless sage, Alanis Morissette, expounding over PBS on Global Warming: The Signs and the Science, I would guess in an attempt to reach the segment of the population that likes Canadian popsicles turned alternate rock singers. Now comes Playboy magazine's prestigious Forum with a dissertation on the four myths about Darwin's theory. The first myth, of course, is that it is a theory. This is the old defense against plastering stickers on textbooks that say, Evolution is a theory, not a fact. Playboy's take, nestled among the oversized boobs, is the party line of empirical science, that theories are theories, but scientific theories are hypotheses which, when supported by overwhelming evidence, take on the coloration of the evidence. This is avoiding saying the obvious, that evolution is a theory, by saying, it's been overwhelmingly verified by the facts it explains.
Playboy's prime example to support this definition of theory popped out, just like the boobs in the magazine, making me think empirical science's target audience for this foray into educational excellence is tailored for boobs. The article states that the "theory of gravity works well to explain why objects fall to earth and why planets orbit the sun. Similarly the theory of evolution does a fine job of explaining both the fossil record and the genetic similarities and differences between species."
The obvious question is, how exactly does the theory of gravity explain why objects fall? That's exactly what the theory of gravity doesn't explain. Even under Newton's scheme of things, a scheme that attempted only to prove that gravity was a property of matter because it was mathematically attached to matter as a result of Newton's proportionality formulas, a scheme that failed on so many levels, I finally devoted two columns to it, column 06 & 10-06, Newton never came to terms with how gravity worked, how it was generated, how it moved from one place to another, and how it acted on matter to cause it to move. For this little problem, Newton withdrew into the depths of alchemy, coming up with blather about how gravity was an active principle perceived as attraction fostered by the divine hand of the creator who maintained the ebb and flow of the universe through the Spirit of Nature.
How's that for working well to explain why objects fall to Earth?
I could probably excuse the Playboy reader for thinking there's anything that explains why objects fall to the surface of the planet, especially after having to pass the cover shot of the beauteous top model Adrianne Curry, who's looks could strike a bell dumb. But virtually everyone on the face of the planet is imbued with the delusion. I have only heard the most secure physicists admit that no one knows how gravity works, and then only off the record, although there are cracks in the veneer of stupidity, with more and more up and coming empirical scientists wondering just what the heck it is, how it's generated, how it moves, and how it acts on matter to cause it to move. But even these relatively open-minded people still believe that Newton was totally right. Without being able to think past untenable assumptions that are virtually invisible to them, they set out in search of the mechanism of gravity everywhere but where gravity is, they seek it out in alternate universes, in quantum fluid embedded in the structure of space time, in, oh, well, who cares.
When pointing out that empirical science was interested in educating all segments of the community, I guess I left the part of education out that dealt with education. Empirical science is concerned with education, all right, in ensuring that we remain as dumb as verbally gifted doorknobs who only repeat rote what we are told to repeat. The Playboy article is educating its readers about something its writers know nothing about, with the readers void of context. Everyone walks away with the impression that we have a fine explanation for why objects fall to the surface of the Earth when we have no explanation at all.
Moving on to the next part of the example of scientific fact over, well, facts that aren't theory, the theory of gravity works well to explain why planets orbit the sun. While this is a claim empirical science likes to make, it's one it knows is totally unsustainable. Here we have the claim that a theory that claims to explain why the planets orbit doesn't explain anything at all about what is making the planets orbit. Perhaps it would be more judicious, and thus more deceptive, to say the theory of gravity explains how the planets orbit, but it doesn't do that either. Newton didn't have any problem with the source of the force that caused the planets to move because he knew it was the same source of gravity, the divine hand of the creator who maintained the ebb and flow of the universe through the Spirit of Nature. He was even more direct. He said God put the planets in motion and came back periodically to give them a little boost to keep them moving.
Why did God have to periodically come back? Well, Newton's space wasn't a vacuum, it was filled with light, and light in Newton's world was a particle and even Newton realized particles would tend to act to slow down the movement of the planets. But the fact is, Newton never, ever even entertained the notion that something needs force to move, that the planets are not in motion because of nothing, they are in motion because something put them in motion and is keeping them in motion. This didn't sit too well with the empirical community as the 18th Century sped along to a conclusion because there could be no God, and if there could be no God, then there could be no God putting the planets in motion. The problem of friction was being solved by turning light into a wave that was non-existent but for the medium through which it moved, and it was busy recreating the aether for light to move through, but that aether filled the vacuum of space and didn't produce any resistance to the movement of the planets. So with the planets in perpetual motion in the vacuum of space, all empirical science needed was a source for the force that was causing the movement. Too uninformed, lazy, and perhaps dumb to actually search for a current force, they did what any empirical scientists does, they produced a force which can never be examined and which therefore can never be disproved. That's the empirical game, come up with balderdash that no one can disprove and you're safe in your sinecure for life, free to leach at the public trough so long as you don't expose the fraud. What is this disprovable force? Why a swirling mass of gas of course. What better source of force from a gaseous community that knows nothing but a swirling mass of gas.
The solar system formed out of a swirling mass of gas billions of years ago with gravity clumping the bits of swirling gas into the sun and the planets and because the mass of gas was swirling, the force of the swirling was transmitted in the form of perpetual momentum to the newly formed planets. Of course, with gravity the only force in the universe, there was nothing to get the mass of gas swirling, and if there was a mass of gas, it would have clumped into one giant ball of matter, but what the hey, the devil is in the details.
So here we have the empirical dogma being transmitted in a popular girlie magazine to readers whose minds are filled with body parts (if you think anyone reads the stories, read one) and the dogma is patently on the face erroneous. Newton never attempted to explain why objects fall to the surface of the Earth and if the publishers of the girlie magazine believe in a God that put the planets in motion, as Newton did, the only evidence of His work is in the pictures, not the text.
So the example used to bolster the argument that evolution is not a theory is bogus. That leaves us to parse what the article says evolution does explain. The theory of evolution, the article says, "does a fine job of explaining both the fossil record and the genetic similarities and differences between species." I should point out that in column 09-05, I set forth my own views on evolution, which basically boil down to the fact that species evolution is the error, that characteristics evolve, and do so on a planet that is cooling, with both lessening temperature and the lessening gravity (column 02-05) remixing the evolved characteristics into animate matter that reflects the environment, a process that explains precisely what empirical science claims species evolution explains.
First as to the claim that Darwinian evolution does a fine job explaining the fossil record. This is not only so not true, it's flabbergasting even nestled among the airbrushed boobs. It's precisely because Darwinian evolution doesn't explain the fossil record that it had to be falsified, thereby disproving it is a theory at all, at least by empirical science's own standards. Falsification was a test dreamed up by a guy named Popper to test whether something is a true scientific theory. He was comparing Einstein to Freud and he said Freud could make any statement about evidence that contradicted his theory to bring the contradictory evidence within the bounds of theory and therefore Freud did not have a valid scientific theory. On the other hand, if one fact disagreed with Einstein's theory, then the theory was proven to be false. A theory that was falsifiable was a scientific theory, one that could just be spun out forever could never be falsified and was therefore not a valid scientific theory.
Darwinian evolution was predicated on a long enough time period for one species to morph into another. Because this morphing would be so gradual, Darwin stated, the fossil record would never provide evidence for it. Notice here, as everywhere in empirical science, the only good theory is one that can never be disproved. Well, what to our wondering eyes should appear in the fossil record but widespread extinctions and the concomitant explosion of life. Oh my, what's an earnest empirical scientist to do to preserve his income? Falsify the theory, of course, only in empirical science circles, when dogma has to be falsified, it's not called falsification, its called saving the theory. Jay Gould, that eminent Harvard intellect, said, hey, evolution occurs out of sight in the form of punctuated equilibrium. I came across this delicious definition of punctuated equilibrium. It is a model where species self-organize into a critical steady state with intermittent co-evolutionary avalanches of all sizes. Basically this means species evolution occurs outside the fossil record. So, a theory that predicts the fossil record will not demonstrate species evolution is saved when the fossil record contradicts species evolution demonstrating fossil evolution by saying species evolution occurs outside the fossil record, and then turns around and says it does a fine job of explaining the fossil record. I would ask, have these people no shame, but then I know delusion is incapable of contradicting itself and thus has nothing to be shameful about.
I'm not sure the second part of the claim is even worth discussing, but what the hey. The theory of evolution does a fine job of explaining "the genetic similarities and differences between the species." One simple question: How? Darwin is reputed to have obtained his inspiration for evolution from the finches on the Galapagos Islands. The islands were isolated, and the finches had developed differently. The conclusion, then, was each had evolved in its own environment. Note, finches are not only members of the same species, they're the same bird. Later scientists camped out on the Galapagos, and there have been many, paying tribute that this shrine of Darwinism, reveling in the observation that the finches can change over a period of years. They note that during periods of plenty, with food determined by rainfall, the finches grow long slender beaks because they are better suited to take in the abundance. When little rainfall makes the food supply rare, the finches' beaks become short and strong, the better to hack apart the thick shelled seeds. This seesaws back and forth, and this is a demonstration of species evolution? As noted in column 09-05, it's evidence of characteristic evolution. The fact of the matter is, Darwin didn't know a fig about the "genetic similarities and differences between the species," heck he wasn't even aware of genetics.
It's fairly clear that empirical science will go to any extent to inculcate as wide a segment of the public as it can reach into its gospel, but why should this be necessary if what it preaches were in fact reality? The answer goes to the heart of the scientific method, empirical science's claim that it has a method that can uncover the nature of reality. In the laboratory, the scientific method is actually a method. A picture about the way reality should be is produced and then reality is tested on a trial and error basis to determine whether that picture of reality actually works in reality. It's how Edison invented thousands of things, how any inventor invents.
Empirical science claims this methodology for its own. However, its picture of gravity, of Celestial Mechanics and species evolution has not a mote of trial and error involved. If we consider the practical, the left-brain function, and the conceptual, the right brain function, the Ptolemaic belief that the sun went around the Earth is a right brain conclusion. Empirical science, in its attempt to avoid such a gigantic mistake, started off grounding itself in the left-brain function of trail and error. The preNewtonian Royal Society was involved solely with the conduct of experiments. However, Newton, and all of empirical science since, is a right brain morass of conceptualization hiding under the guise of a left-brain methodology. By believing that the left-brain mathematical process can protect against right brain errors, empirical science has proceeded to create a right brain fantasy world that has no basis in reality.
It deludes itself that its methodology protects it from conceptual error when the springboard of the left-brain trial and error function is conceptualization. By creating concepts with the mathematical left-brain function, it limits its ability to conceptualize in the right brain. Its baseless mass gravity limits conceptualization of any picture that would lead to the trail and error use of gravity as a mechanical process. We end up with a distorted technology because we have a distorted picture of physical reality. Empirical science can't argue reasonably about its conclusions, so it simply refuses to argue, hides behind bogus statements that its bogus conclusions are beyond question, and laughs its butt off at our expense all the way to the bank.
Peter Bros is the author of the 9 volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com