Can Science and Philosophy Coexist, or (Moved from P&CE)

Pup · May 9, 2014

milkweed said:
We will have to agree to disagree on this point, as there were recent articles (and at this point in the day I'm very tired and still have way too many things to get done to go looking for them) that puts man as having existed at the time of the dinosaurs. IIRC there was an article recently in Nat'l Geographic.

When you return, I'd like to see a link.

There is absolutely no chance of any article claiming that humans existed at the time of the dinosaurs, published in any peer-reviewed or serious science magazine or journal, unless one redefines "dinosaurs" beyond its normal meaning to include "contemporary birds" or something like that, and therefore makes the claim trivially true.

Now if you want to talk about fringe stuff like wild horses and humans alive together in the pre-Columbus Americas, sure, there are going to be ongoing discoveries.

But dinosaurs and humans? No way.

In my opinion, the only place you'd find such a claim would be April Fool's Day issues, fantasy stories, science fiction, or in non-peer-reviewed creationist-friendly websites or publications.

I'm very curious what you're referring to.

robeiae · May 9, 2014

It's probably this: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/04/0418_020418_primates.html

But that's about the first primate existing 80 million years ago, not man.

Helix · May 9, 2014

robeiae said:
It's probably this: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/04/0418_020418_primates.html

But that's about the first primate existing 80 million years ago, not man.

The original paper (from 2002) is behind the Nature pay wall, but the abstract is available.

Here we present a new statistical method, based on an estimate of species preservation derived from a model of the diversification pattern, that suggests a Cretaceous last common ancestor of primates, approximately 81.5 Myr ago, close to the initial divergence time inferred from molecular data.

kuwisdelu · May 9, 2014

Pup said:
Now if you want to talk about fringe stuff like wild horses and humans alive together in the pre-Columbus Americas, sure, there are going to be ongoing discoveries.

Some tribes always had some horses.

Deleted member 42 · May 9, 2014

robeiae said:
It's probably this: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/04/0418_020418_primates.html

But that's about the first primate existing 80 million years ago, not man.

Yeah, that's a very very different thing. Also, it doesn't contradict earlier data, it just refines it.

Keep in mind that Primate as a category of mammals simply means a group of mammals with nails on the hands and feet, a short snout, and a large brain. Primates in terms of extant mammals includes lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, and apes including humans. Typically, there's an ancestry that involves climbing and / or living in trees or tropical forests. It includes everything from the mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) all the way to Gorillas and humans our primate but not homo sapiens sapiens primate ancestors.

This was a slow process, and we're still finding new data, new fossils/bones, and getting a better understanding of DNA. But there's a consensus, mostly.

The assumption is that the group of Primates likely has a common ancestor that was a mammal, and that it was likely small, and somewhat rodent-like. But that that shared ancestor's descendants began to spread apart and become different in different environments and ecosystems.

This is much the same kind of argument that a related group of languages likely has a common ancestor language, shared by the group. Humans migrated and languages began to diversify. So We have a huge Indo-European Language family, consisting of Germanic, Indic, Romance, Celtic and other languages, which are now mutually unintelligible in most instances, but clearly have common ancestors.

Chrissy · May 9, 2014

Don't know if anyone has heard of this? Evolving in Monkey Town (recently retitled Faith Unraveled) by Rachel Held Evans is an excellent book. It tells part of her story: she was raised evangelical, with all the Bible-believing stuff that goes along with that, but has managed to keep her Christian faith even after accepting evolution as fact, feminism as indispensable, marriage equality as essential, and *gasp* I'm pretty sure she voted for Obama. Twice, even.

She has a great blog, too, if anyone is interested.

Williebee · May 9, 2014

2012 Wooly Mammoths, maybe?

Chrissy · May 9, 2014

I'd also add, in response to the OP, that yes, philosophy and science can coexist, imo, as long as neither one demands anything from the other. Same with religion and science, imo.

I do agree with some of the posters that Tyson seemed dismissive (I listened to the whole segment), and since it wasn't in response to any particular philosophy or philosopher infringing upon his scientific turf (although I imagine his remarks stemmed from a perceived infringement), he just sounded like a jerk, disparaging of a subject because it meant nothing to *him*.

The thing about expertise in a subject is that, to me, it tends to mean very little if you can't relate to or at the very least respect your fellow human beings, even the ones who aren't as *smart* as you are. See: Flowers for Algernon.

It's when people start feeling superior enough to disparage others that things go to shite, ime.

milkweed · May 9, 2014

kuwisdelu said:
Some tribes always had some horses.

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh come on now we native americans (I'm half mi'kmaq) know better than to make such assertions it upsets the euros who believe they brought us everything including horses!

and yet they expect us to also buy the gaia continent theory while also holding to the theory that NA's ONLY came over the siberian land bridge... yeah right.

milkweed · May 9, 2014

Pup said:
When you return, I'd like to see a link.

I'm very curious what you're referring to.

Good your curious, do your own research! I did mine for my SciFi/Fantasy Horror book and yeah I'm not going to do the research for yours... been there done that and well was mocked to hell and back by the ungrateful writers.

kuwisdelu · May 9, 2014

milkweed said:
Good your curious, do your own research! I did mine for my SciFi/Fantasy Horror book and yeah I'm not going to do the research for yours... been there done that and well was mocked to hell and back by the ungrateful writers.

You should know better that that's not the way things work around here when you make a claim.

robeiae said:
It's probably this: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/04/0418_020418_primates.html

But that's about the first primate existing 80 million years ago, not man.

Is this what you were talking about or not?

Pup · May 10, 2014

milkweed said:
Good your curious, do your own research! I did mine for my SciFi/Fantasy Horror book and yeah I'm not going to do the research for yours... been there done that and well was mocked to hell and back by the ungrateful writers.

Looks like the link has been posted above, and it doesn't say what you claimed.

On the topic in general:

There's a long-running thread elsewhere here titled "Stupid things non-writers say," about the clueless, frustrating, hurtful, face-palming things said by people who innocently and sincerely believe they know enough about writing to offer helpful advice to writers but who clearly don't. Stuff like: Why don't you add some vampires to your book so it'll be a bestseller? Or: I have a great idea for a novel; why don't I tell it to you and you write it and we'll split the profits?

There are, of course, many scientists who are religious and many religious people who have a good amateur understanding of science. But I think in some cases, religious people comment on science and perceive the baffled looks, face-palms, merciful lack of response, etc., as evidence they've stumped those atheistic scientists with their powerful amateur insight, rather than evidence that they're coming across like those people trying to give advice to writers.

RichardGarfinkle · May 10, 2014

milkweed said:
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh come on now we native americans (I'm half mi'kmaq) know better than to make such assertions it upsets the euros who believe they brought us everything including horses!

and yet they expect us to also buy the gaia continent theory while also holding to the theory that NA's ONLY came over the siberian land bridge... yeah right.

milkweed said:
Good your curious, do your own research! I did mine for my SciFi/Fantasy Horror book and yeah I'm not going to do the research for yours... been there done that and well was mocked to hell and back by the ungrateful writers.

Several things.

The first is a general
<Mod Note For Everyone>
This is the Comparative Religious Philosophy. Comparative means that we pull in things from all sorts of sources, that we can't expect everyone else to have read.

If you bring in something with a link, please flesh out what you think the referred document is saying. If you bring it in, it's your responsibility to present it to the rest in a coherent fashion so others don't have to redo the work you did. Doing this is a kindness to the other participants on the board and will enhance your reputation among your fellow posters.
</Mod Note For Everyone>

Now back to my secret identity as just some lunatic babbling nonsense.

The Gaia reference above is off by about two orders of magnitude from the time of human migrations. Pangaea was around 250 million years ago. http://geology.com/pangea.htm

But the idea that every Native American came over on the land bridge is pretty iffy. I personally suspect that it betrays a bias against the idea of people using boats early on, even though the Pacific islands and Australia were obviously colonized by people boating. This may all be tied into a Eurocentric attitude that until the age of European exploration no one ever did anything long long range at sea.

vsrenard · May 10, 2014

kuwisdelu said:
There is nothing particularly special about logic.

Given any rigid system of logic, there will always be truths that logic cannot prove.

Just because something is logical does not mean that it is true.

And a superb example of this is 'Alice in Wonderland,' a masterpiece of logic and mathematics that is utterly nonsensical in places.

vsrenard · May 10, 2014

kuwisdelu said:
I'll just share this anecdote:

He asked me if my religion was the Zuni religion. I replied like I would to a Christian: that I wasn't sure if I believed that all of that literally happened exactly like that, but—

And then he laughed. He said that's not what he meant. Because religion has nothing to do with believing in a literal interpretation of its mythology. It has to do with finding truth and meaning in a shared expression of spiritual culture.

So the answer to his question was yes, that is my religion. Because it is truth to me, which has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it literally happened or not.

This, so much this.

There is a popular young person's book in the Hindu community titled 'Am I a Hindu?' and many of these questions are posed and answered in the format of a young kid asking his elders about what is means to truly be a Hindu. I have always learned that there are many paths to reconciling oneself with God. One is learning the lessons and teaching of the religions, and applying them to one's life. Another is immersing yourself in God, and letting Her guide your path. And another is doing good works for others, and not focusing on yourself. It may take several lifetimes for a soul to reach the point of selflessness and communion with God.

Then again, Hinduism also says that the stories and images we give gods are necessary because we cannot understand God's true form and meaning. This, to me, is a way Hindus can reconcile God with science.

I, however, am agnostic.

RichardGarfinkle · May 10, 2014

vsrenard said:
And a superb example of this is 'Alice in Wonderland,' a masterpiece of logic and mathematics that is utterly nonsensical in places.

Lewis Carroll in his secret identity of Charles Dodgson was actually one of the pioneers of modern symbolic logic (sadly his symbolism was wretched). One of the reasons he excelled at nonsense was his thorough awareness of what made things make sense.

Deleted member 42 · May 10, 2014

kuwisdelu said:
Some tribes always had some horses.

I don't see how that's possible Kuwi.

The time periods just don't work to support "always" in North America.

robeiae · May 10, 2014

Medievalist said:
I don't see how that's possible Kuwi.

The time periods just don't work to support "always" in North America.

Yes, that's always been my understanding. Horses were here (in North America), they died out (by the hand of man or otherwise), then were re-introduced.

Pup · May 10, 2014

Medievalist said:
I don't see how that's possible Kuwi.

The time periods just don't work to support "always" in North America.

Thanks! Those fit with what I'd thought. Though I expect the amount of overlap between North American humans and horses will be revised for a while due to things like this, it's my understanding that there's so much lack of evidence for "always," where one would expect to find evidence, that evidence to support "always" would need to be earth-shaking indeed.

Deleted member 42 · May 10, 2014

robeiae said:
Yes, that's always been my understanding. Horses were here (in North America), they died out (by the hand of man or otherwise), then were re-introduced.

Yep. And there's extensive DNA testing to substantiate that. Plus we have all sorts of genetic mapping data for horses from all over the world because of breed restrictions and "papers" and the economic value of both.

Heck, they've retrieved DNA from the teeth of European ritualistic horse burials and the Tarim basin and Tocharian "equine mummies."

I suspect that we have more equine dna data than people data, honestly.

That said, I would not doubt oral traditions regarding pre-dieout horses, though the data we have strongly suggests they were used for meat and not domesticated.

milkweed · May 10, 2014

kuwisdelu said:
You should know better that that's not the way things work around here when you make a claim.

Is this what you were talking about or not?

No, the article I'm referring to was published sometime last year. I have it in a stack of PDF's on my computer, some place.

milkweed · May 10, 2014

RichardGarfinkle said:
Now back to my secret identity as just some lunatic babbling nonsense.

The Gaia reference above is off by about two orders of magnitude from the time of human migrations. Pangaea was around 250 million years ago. http://geology.com/pangea.htm

Genesis 10:25 Peleg gets a brief mention, when God divided the earth. There are two different interpetations (of course right) that are attributed to this division.

One - God divided the peoples of the earth and sent them on their way, but Peleg occurs after the Tower of Babyl so there's no sense in dividing them again.

Two - the earth literally splits apart and the seperate continents are formed.

It all depends on whether you read the text in it's original language or one of the many versions of the bible. Blue Letter Bible online is a great resource as they have the text in it's original language as well as greek, latin, etc.

RichardGarfinkle · May 10, 2014

milkweed said:
Genesis 10:25 Peleg gets a brief mention, when God divided the earth. There are two different interpetations (of course right) that are attributed to this division.

One - God divided the peoples of the earth and sent them on their way, but Peleg occurs after the Tower of Babyl so there's no sense in dividing them again.

Two - the earth literally splits apart and the seperate continents are formed.

It all depends on whether you read the text in it's original language or one of the many versions of the bible. Blue Letter Bible online is a great resource as they have the text in it's original language as well as greek, latin, etc.

Biblical reference isn't scientific evidence. It's the falsifiability problem again. If someone holds up a Biblical quote as evidence of truth they are implicitly asserting that what the Bible contains is literal, real fact truth. The question then becomes is that person asserting this as final unchallengable truth or provisional hypothetical truth.

If it's the former then they are offering an unfalsifiable claim, and therefore they are speaking outside the realm of science.

If it's the latter, then they are placing the Bible's claims on the same footing as any other claim about the real world, letting them stand or fall as the evidence dictates.

milkweed · May 10, 2014

RichardGarfinkle said:
Biblical reference isn't scientific evidence. It's the falsifiability problem again. If someone holds up a Biblical quote as evidence of truth they are implicitly asserting that what the Bible contains is literal, real fact truth. The question then becomes is that person asserting this as final unchallengable truth or provisional hypothetical truth.

If it's the former then they are offering an unfalsifiable claim, and therefore they are speaking outside the realm of science.

If it's the latter, then they are placing the Bible's claims on the same footing as any other claim about the real world, letting them stand or fall as the evidence dictates.

I wasn't taking it as scientific fact, I was taking it as an event that was impressive enough that it was documented in a major religious text of that day.

FWIW the Bible isn't the only religous or philisophical text to make note of this event, I'll have to go searching for the text but IIRC it was noted in a greek text.

Williebee · May 10, 2014

milkweed said:
...it was documented in a major religious text of that day.

I can't find a way to parse this that does not leave it standing as bent, logically.

Can Science and Philosophy Coexist, or (Moved from P&CE)

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