The Whirlpool Galaxy is 20 odd million light years away. With Jason
Lisle’s AiG published ASC model in mind does its study classify as
observational science in the present or historical science? Or does it really
matter? Don't ask Ken Ham; there is little chance that this fundamentalist will understand that in science the time coordinate doesn't have a fundamental significance; scientific epistemology is an attempt to get data samples about logical structures for which time may be thought of as just one coordinate.
Below I have published a blog post by Fundamentalist Ken Ham where
once again he tries to explain to himself why he is not being anti-science in
rejecting historical science. It all swings on Ham attempting to maintain that
there is a sharp distinction between "observational" (sic) and historical science. As I
have said before in this series this distinction can’t be made because all science is at once
both historical and observational. This is not to say, however, that all
science is on an equal footing in terms of its observational rigor. The objects
science deals with vary in their logical distance from observational protocols
and the number of observational samples gathered supporting these quasi-conjectured objects.
If Ham had his head screwed on properly he would simply maintain that some
scientific objects have a more tenuous basis in accepted observational
protocols than others. What the scientifically naive Ham is trying to prove to
himself is that there is a fundamental difference in quality between "observational" and historical sciences that provides him with a pretext for writing off historical
science as “unobservable”. This is all very typical of the fundamentalist mentality
which tends to think in black and white dichotomies anyway. I caught Ham trying a similar trick with his “mature” creation
theory where he has a need to decide what objects are permitted to show evidence
of a bogus history and those that aren't – that is, the YEC needs to try and
decide when and when not to apply the omphalos hypothesis. (See my Beyond our
Ken series – links at the end of this post).
***
Around the Twist World with Ken Ham
ShareThis
Published on December 5, 2014 in Current Issues in the World.
I recently
saw something in Discovery News that
perfectly highlights the difference between observational and historical
science.
Common Tenrec (Tenrec ecaudatus). By John Mather
(Own work) [CC-BY-SA-4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via
Wikimedia Commons
A study has
shown that tenrecs, hedgehog-looking creatures, have an amazing ability to
hibernate (observational science) so the scientists inferred that the tenrecs
must have hibernated through the dinosaur extinction (historical science)! As
I’ve said many times previously, there are two different kinds of science.
Observational science deals with the present and is observable, repeatable, and
testable. It’s what produces our technology and our medical innovations.
Creationists and evolutionists can both agree on this kind of science. Now,
historical science deals with the past. It is not testable, repeatable or
observable. What you think about historical science is based on your starting
point. Do you begin with God’s Word or man’s ideas? Well, I would like to show
you how to recognize the difference between these kinds of sciences by looking
at this news item that is reporting a scientific study.
***
My Comment: Notice straight away that
this science dunce is imposing a dichotomy on the situation. He thinks that “observational science deals with the present
and is observable, repeatable, and testable” whereas “….historical science deals with the past. It is not testable,
repeatable or observable”. It seems
well beyond Ken Ham’s mentality to make the fine distinctions needed to
understand that in an absolute sense nothing is observable and repeatable and everything is subject to “your starting point”. Even when testing the present tense continuous
objects of physics we can never exactly reproduce test conditions and the test
is therefore subject to one’s starting
point in terms of fundamental assumptions about the rationality, uniformity
and epistemic
integrity of nature. Moreover, given that observational protocols
quickly pass into history Ken’s so-called “observational science” is bound up
with history. And yet in a relative sense a wide class of objects, including historical objects, are all subject
to observation and repeatable tests in as much as, for example, we can go back
to check and reinterpret documents and fossils and perhaps even find new
documents and fossils. In fact as a rule all
science depends on us interpreting signals sent to us from the past;
documents and fossils are an example of such signals.
I’d agree with Ken that a lot
depends on one’s a priori world view.
E.g. one’s view about very fundamental and foundational stuff like whether or
not one considers the world to be rational, readable and to have epistemic
integrity. But as a hardened heretic hunting fundamentalist Ham ups-the-ante by
raising his far less fundamental opinions about Biblical interpretation to the
level of fundamental and unreviewable authority. It is on this basis that Ham
does his heresy testing: “Do you begin
with God’s Word or man’s ideas?” He hasn’t spotted the abstraction that “God’s
Word” is a signal and as such must be interpreted.
***
Observational
Science
According
to Discovery News,
radio transmitters with body temperature loggers were strapped onto 15 tenrecs
for a scientific study on hibernation. The tenrecs were then released back into
the wilds of Madagascar. The scientists involved learned some interesting
things about tenrec hibernation and body temperature. For example, one of the
male tenrecs hibernated for nine months with no ill side effects! According to
the news report, the
information about hibernation from this study, as well as a similar one being
done in the United States, “could one day allow researchers to better mitigate
the effects of induced medical comas and the ‘hypogravity and/or inactivity’
that would occur during a lengthy trip through space.”
Now,
everything from the study so far is observational science based on directly
observable, testable, repeatable studies. A creationist or an evolutionist
could have done the study and obtained the same data, and either scientist
could apply the data to medicine or space travel. But the study then does a
huge leap from observational evidence to the unobserved past. They switch from
observational science to historical science. And it’s this switch that people
need to learn to recognize, as evolutionists do the same sort of switch when
talking about origins!
***
My Comment: This is a case where the tenrec study provided a replete set of data
samples about the objects under scrutiny. But let’s not fool ourselves that
this is about “direct observation” as Ham would have it. Scientists clearly did
not directly observe tenrecs but were engaged in the interpretation of signals
sent by them. And no, fundamentalists don’t necessarily agree about “observational”
science even with other fundamentalists: Viz: Ken Ham would certainly disagree
with fundamentalist Gerardus Bouw about the “observational” science that leads
Bouw to propound geocentric theories. And in turn Bouw would disagree with the
late fundamentalist Charles K Johnson whose science of “appearances”
lead him to propound flat Earth theories. At the most abstracted level there is only one kind of science: Viz: the
observed signal and the interpretation of the text it is sending us.
The
past is observable in as much as it
sends us signals that ultimately result in observational protocols; as does
everything else. True, we may not have as many signals as we like returning to
us and they may have been a long time in the travelling, but they are
observations none the less. Ken Ham just doesn’t seem able to make this theoretical abstraction
about signals being the medium of all observation. It is ironic that it was his
AiG organization that first published Jason Lisle’s ASC model of the cosmos, a
model that so blatantly raises questions about the nature of signaling and by implication
just what is “the present” and what is “the past”! But this sort of stuff is
well beyond our Ken not to mention his audience of admiring and less than critical followers.
***
Historical
Science
Again, the
observational evidence showed that tenrecs have an amazing ability to hibernate
(observational science). But the scientists then took the evidence beyond
observational science to infer that tenrecs must have hibernated through the
dinosaur extinction (supposedly millions of years ago) and that’s how mammals
survived to evolve into other mammal species (historical science). Supposedly,
dinosaurs “‘intensely suppressed, dominated and bullied’ early mammals, which
‘could never get big in size because then they would not have been able to hide
effectively during the day.’ This presumed pressure, combined with seasonally
limited resources and other factors ‘may have armed modern mammals with the
useful capacity to metabolically switch off.’” It is claimed. So, tenrec
ancestors apparently evolved the ability to hibernate for long periods of time
because of competition with dinosaurs. And they just happened to be lucky
enough to hibernate at the right time to avoid extinction. Now, this is all
historical science, and creationists and evolutionists would (quite obviously)
disagree here. This jump from the observable hibernation periods of tenrecs to
the unobservable supposed dinosaur extinction event is based, not on
observational evidence, but on imagination. The study itself shows nothing
about supposed tenrec ancestors and the supposed dinosaur age millions of years
ago!
Interestingly
enough, according to the lead author of the study, “the common tenrec [is] a
living Cretaceous fossil, a living critter that has retained the physiological
characteristics of our common placental ancestor.” In other words, tenrecs
basically haven’t changed since their appearance in the fossil record. The
evolution isn’t in the fossils or the tenrecs—it’s in the imaginations of
scientists!
***
My Comment: No!... this evolutionary hypothesis about
tenrecs is not in principle beyond observational science because the past
sends us signals such as historical documents, research papers, archaeology,
fossils, light rays etc. But what I would concede is that in this case the
signals are highly attenuated, the observational protocols few and far between
and perhaps the gaps filled in with a fair amount of speculation. You see, the
issue is not to do with the past per se,
but with the comprehensiveness of the sample of observational protocols and
their logical distance in terms of adjustable variables from the putative objects they allegedly reveal. This is not an issue of
a fundamental distinction in science, but a question of degree of observational
support for a hypothesis; true, we can sometimes be tempted to join very few
dots with very free format speculation and elaboration.
But Ham being a fundamentalist
thinks habitually in dichotomies and not in degrees. Ham wants to portray himself
as science friendly and give a pretext based on his dichotomized thinking to
justify to himself his science hostility
and scientific ineptitude. He cannot accept that there is a uniformity of
principle at stake with all science, historical and otherwise; namely, the interpretation
of the signals sent to us from the cosmos near and far. It is simply beyond the
mentality of this man to understand the paradox that relatively speaking just about everything is observational and repeatable
and yet in an absolute sense nothing
is observational and repeatable!
***
What Does the
Bible Say?
Now, the
Bible’s account of origins would mean the tenrec kind was
created on Day 6, to reproduce after their kind. Tenrecs produce tenrecs
(interestingly enough, in nature we see tenrecs producing only tenrecs)! God
created animals to fill the earth, so He placed in their DNA the information
they would need to produce the wide variety within a kind that we see today so
that they would be able to survive as the environment changes. The incredible
variety of tenrec species displays God’s care and wisdom in equipping them with
the information they needed to fill many niches in the different environments
found on Madagascar and in Africa. One of these features is the ability of some
tenrec species to hibernate for long periods of time. So this incredible
ability to hibernate is just one more example of God’s care for His creatures.
As you read
through science news, I encourage you to be discerning, part of which involves
learning how to separate observational science from historical science.
In the debate
with Bill Nye, I took time to explain the difference between historical and
observational science, as once people understand this, they recognize that
molecules-to-man evolution is a belief system.
Thanks for
stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken
***
My Comment: I suspect that Ken’s comments about “Information” are based on the
North American taste for a God-of-Gaps
theology of evolution. It would simply be too much to expect Ham to attempt to
think round these categories to advanced ideas about information generation, so
I can’t be too hard on him here. Notice, however, that his main agenda is to impose
on his followers his fundamentalist views about a fundamental division in science based on a bogus distinction between observational and historical
science. However, I would agree that any signal
interpretation is influenced and perhaps even based on a priori belief
systems – it’s just that some belief systems, for a variety of socio-psychological
reasons, are far more elaborated, baroque, entrenched, authoritarian and unreviewable
than others; know what I mean?
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying that Ken Ham will be less of an embarrassment to Christians.
Relevant Links
Mangling Science
Series
Beyond Our Ken
Series
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