John Edser wrote:

> 
> JE:-
> IMHO fitness mutualisation can explain the
> "benevolent selfishness we find in ourselves",
> that was my point.
> 

How does fitness mutualisation differ from symbiosis?

> 
> JE:-
> Gould and Lewontin's logic was faulty.
> A random process is not a testable
> causative supposition, i.e. given any
> random pattern, nobody can ever test
> if a random OR a non random process had
> caused it. 

What does that have to do with their claim that theorists such as
yourself have difficulty imagining anything other than adpative
explanations to put forward for testing?

> Thus, we either advance testable hypothesis 
> of how Darwinism MAY have caused the 
> pattern we wish to explain OR we 
> propose another testable process to
> explain it. 

What "test" did Darwin himself propose when he published 'Origins'?

> 
> Darwinians do NOT just "assume that every 
> feature we find in an organism
> must necessarily be adaptive" they
> simply advance, valid, testable hypothesis
> of how Darwinism may have caused 
> them. 

That may well be, but the number of testable non-adaptionist
explanations seem pretty slim, so far.  Its not a matter of
logic, but of observation on their behalf, one I totally
agree with.

I recently attended a conference in Montreal in which I was
the only guy in a roomful of some thirty profs who entertained
even the possibility that moraltiy might actually be maladatpive.
Talk about feeling lonely.  Except for Matt Ridley, that is,
but only in a private talk with me after the meeting.

> This is how all the sciences
> work! The amount of imaginative thinking, 
> testing and rethinking is just enormous.

Actually, its not.  These older positivist notion have been
severely criticized by the likes of Bhaskar, Manicas and
Secord, Harre, Hansen, Brown, numerous others.  What we
now understand about science that we didn't some fourty
years ago is that what science is mostly about is maximizing
explanatory coherence.  Charles Sander's Pierce was the first
to put this forward in a cohenent thesis.  But guys like
Toulmin and Kuhn have done much to increase its public
awareness.

Don't get me wrong.  Testability is definitely a good thing.
Its just that its not a necessary thing, at least not initially.
What we are usually looking for is good cognitive fit, such as
Mr. Darwin's realization that "the best explanation" (Harman,
Lycan, Pierce, Thagard, etc.) for the diversity obseved in
isolated geographical regions (e.g., the Galapogos) was the
theory of natural selection rather than the creationist
account, in which such an observalbe feature would have to
be explained ad hod.

> Belittling all this valid hard work
> and then, just end up substituting it with  
> a non testable assumption of a random
> process as validly causative, is beneath contempt.
> Darwinians insist, like all the sciences 
> insist, there must be a REASONABLE explanation.
> Once we start dumping testable views
> for a preferred belief, we dump science.
> 

But your notion of REASONABLE is coming from "an extrinsic philsophy
of science that is now some [fifty] years out of date" (Sigmund
Koch).  Much of it was an offshoot of P. W. Bridgman's operationalism,
divised to assist IN PHYSICS.  Bridgman himself was appauled at the
way folks glombed onto this notion applying it way beyond
its orignal intent, and spend the last two decades of his life
trying to undue the damage.

   'The scientific method, to the extent there is any such thing,
    is simply doing one's damnedest with one's mind, NO HOLDS
    BARRED' (P. W. Bridgman).


>>JE:-
>>Evolutionary 
>>theory is nothing more than a testable view of absolute fitness. 
> 

Its nice when you can devise one.  But if a single idea can account
for myriads of unexplained details, you're just about the only guy
I know of who would consider it "unscientific" to assume it to be
a reasonable hypothesis.  Certainty in science went out of fashion
with the demise of Newtonian mechanics.  That and the demise of
foundationalism in epistemology, I suppose.


PR
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