[Taxacom] more science nonsense

[JF Mate]

I am saying the same thing Stephen, that science is a heuristic whereby we
tentatively accept the simplest explanation that fits the available facts
as 'rule of thumb' simply to reduce the number of possibilities in a
consistent way. People have been fighting over Ockham's razor or its
variants for centuries and I doubt we will make headway.

On Thu, 3 Oct 2019, 02:27 Stephen Thorpe, <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
wrote:

> Jason said: "Its study only makes sense if you accept that the simplest
> explanation is the likeliest"
>
> I'm not sure that this is a necessary assumption? After all, how much, if
> anything, do we really know about likelihoods? Probably (no pun intended!)
> not much.
>
> Maybe we should view pure science as an approach whereby we run with
> simplest explanations, not because we think that they are any more or less
> likely, but just because it is a rule of "the game"? Without it, we can't
> get anywhere, because there are always alternative possibilities with
> varying degrees of complexity.
>
> This does however raise the question as to whether a lot of this stuff is
> actually worth bothering with at all. Speaking for myself, I'm much happier
> to document biodiversity (Recent and fossil) rather than worry about
> inferring inherently inconclusive theories about evolutionary history. Some
> people think of the latter as science and the former as "stamp collecting",
> but I consider the latter to be little more than "pissing in the wind", to
> use a somewhat vulgar expression!
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
> On Thursday, 3 October 2019, 12:11:20 am UTC, JF Mate via Taxacom <
> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:
>
>
> I think this is going to lead nowhere. I am ignorant of "bird"
> systematics but after a quick check of the article´s phylogeny and the
> distribution of fossils, it looks like the area of origin is still
> confused. Having said that the authors said it was suggestive (and I
> agree) and as such they are making an educated guess based on the fact
> that the most primitive known taxon is SH, and most derived taxa are
> also SH. Maybe if they threw into the phylogeny the known species of
> Pelagornis and Dasornis then more could be said. (so a draw IMO)
>
> However the statement "... there never has been any empirical
> demonstration that the location of the oldest fossil corresponds
> to the oldest occupied area for a taxon." is more telling.
> Evolutionary history is reconstructive and as such there is loss of
> information. Its study only makes sense if you accept that the
> simplest explanation is the likeliest, which in the case of fossils
> means that the area of distribution of the taxon must coincide with
> that of the fossil, and must reflect the inferred biology and
> "typical" distribution of similar taxa. Evolutionary sciences are
> often accused of being slightly about "just so stories" and there is
> some truth to that because there is an awful lot of gaps to fill. On
> the other hand it is dangerous to use the gaps as evidence.
>
> In the end this boils down to your perspective on cladistic
> biogeography, and we all know where the lines in the sand lie.
>
> J
>
> On Thu, 3 Oct 2019 at 05:55, Stephen Thorpe via Taxacom
> <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:
> >
> >  John,I'd like to know what other Taxacomers think about this, as it is
> crucial to the proper understanding of science itself. You seem to be
> trying to undermine scientific inferences on the basis that there are other
> possible explanations of the same facts. That might be a sensible approach
> to certain kinds of cases, but not ones of this kind, I suggest. You seem
> to be conflating certainty with empirical support (for a hypothesis).
> Science isn't about determining the truth, it is about being led by
> evidence. If the oldest and most primitive member of a group is discovered
> as a fossil in the S Hemisphere, then that evidence suggests a S Hemisphere
> origin for the group. Sure, there are other, more convoluted possibilities
> which could be wheeled in ad hoc, but that's not science! The authors are
> not claiming any certainty of a S Hemisphere origin for the group, merely
> that such an origin is suggested by the available evidence. I see no
> particular problem with this, except perhaps the overly heavy weight that
> science puts on working with mere inconclusive suggestions from empirical
> evidence. For applied science, at the end of the day, somethinbg either
> works or it doesn't, but, for pure science, the inconclusive suggestions
> just lead to inconclusive theories with which scientists occupy their time
> and resources, but for what???Stephen
> >    On Wednesday, 2 October 2019, 02:11:13 pm UTC, John Grehan <
> calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >  Stephen - the assertion that a southern hemisphere origin "is suggested
> by the new evidence" is indeed nonsense. The fossil can only suggest that a
> clade was present at a particular place and time. Empirically it says
> nothing about the origin of the taxon with respect to younger fossils
> elsewhere. Its quite possible that the group had its origin from a
> widespread ancestor that was in both the northern and southern hemisphere
> and the (current) oldest fossil happens to be located in the south. It does
> not matter that the fossil may represent the basal lineage as this may just
> represent an initial vicariance. So dreaming up a local (southern) origin
> is not science at all, just nonsense.
> >
> > John Grehan
> > On Tue, Oct 1, 2019 at 11:21 PM Stephen Thorpe <
> stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
> >
> >  Hold on there one minute John!On the scale of "science nonsense", this
> might not even qualify! The key word is "suggests". The fossil does
> demonstrate that the oldest and most primitive *known* member of the group
> is from the Southern Hemisphere, so that it *evidence* that the group
> evolved there. It is the simplest explanation of the known facts, that's
> all. Otherwise, you have to posit the existence of unknown like fossils in
> the Northern Hemisphere, for which there is currently no evidence, and
> consider it chance that the first such fossil just happened to be found in
> the Southern Hemisphere. Sure, that it *possible*, but nobody seems to be
> saying that a Southern Hemisphere origin it is 100% certain, just that it
> is suggested by the new evidence.Stephen
> >    On Wednesday, 2 October 2019, 03:04:40 am UTC, John Grehan via
> Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:
> >
> >  Never ceases to amaze me. In a recent paper the following assertion:
> >
> > "All previously known Paleocene records of pelagornithids stem from the
> > Northern Hemisphere, but as the oldest and phylogenetically most basal
> > representative,
> > Protodontopteryx suggests that these birds actually evolved in the
> Southern
> > Hemisphere."
> >
> > Apart from the  center of origin illusion, there never has been any
> > empirical demonstration that the location of the oldest fossil
> corresponds
> > to the oldest occupied area for a taxon. But still they keep saying it as
> > if it were real.
> >
> >
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335873378_Oldest_smallest_and_phylogenetically_most_basal_pelagornithid_from_the_early_Paleocene_of_New_Zealand_sheds_light_on_the_evolutionary_history_of_the_largest_flying_birds
> >
> >
> > John Grehan
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