Talk:Creation geophysics/Catastrophic plate tectonics archive

message: "Catastrophic plate tectonics is a pseudoscientific theory..." According to the Psuedoscience article, it says that the theory must not be of the scientific method. How is a theory like this not of the scientific method? Nothing is mentioned about this.
-(unsigned, by Sega01)
:Well, these are the elements listed as essential on the Scientific method article:
  
The essential elementsSee the hypothethico-deductive method, for example: p.236 —Peter Godfrey-Smith (2003), Theory and Reality: An introduction to the philosophy of science pp.265-6 (in the Dover edition) —William Stanley Jevons (1873), The principles of science: a treatise on logic and scientific method. pp.65,73,92,398 —Andrew J. Galambos, Sic Itur ad Astra (AJG learned scientific method from Felix Ehrenhaft) of a scientific method
Galileo Galilei Linceo (1638), Discorsi e Dimonstrazioni Matematiche, intorno a due nuoue scienze. In Leida, Apresso gli Elsevirri M.D.C.XXXVIII. Two New Sciences was selected from the collection of the Library of Congress by Leonard C. Bruno (1988), The Landmarks of Science  are iterationsIteration example: Chaldean astronomers such as Kidinnu compiled astronomical data. Hipparchus was to use this data to calculate the precession of the Earth's axis.  Fifteen hundred years after Kiddinu, Al-Batani,  born in what is now Turkey,  would use the collected data and improve Hipparchus' value for the precession of the Earth's axis. Al-Batani's value, 54.5 arc-seconds per year, compares well to the current value of 49.8 arc-seconds per year (26,000 years for Earth's axis to round the circle of nutation)., recursionsRecursion example: the Earth is itself a magnet, with its own North and South Poles
William Gilbert (in Latin 1600) De Magnete, or On Magnetism and Magnetic Bodies. Translated from Latin to English, selection by
Forest Ray Moulton and Justus J. Schifferes (eds., Second Edition 1960) The Autobiography of Science pp.113-117, interleavings, and orderings of the following:
*Characterizations (Quantifications, observations"The foundation of general physics ... is experience. These ... everyday experiences we do not discover without deliberately directing our attention to them. Collecting information about these is observation." —Hans Christian Ørsted("First Introduction to General Physics" ¶13, part of a series of public lectures at the University of Copenhagen. Copenhagen 1811, in Danish, printed by Johan Frederik Schulz. In Kirstine Meyer's 1920 edition of Ørsted's works, vol.III pp. 151-190. ) "First Introduction to Physics: the Spirit, Meaning, and Goal of Natural Science". Reprinted in German in 1822, Schweigger's Journal für Chemie und Physik  36, pp.458-488. Translated to English by Karen Jelved, Andrew D. Jackson, and Ole Knudsen, (translators 1997)  Selected Scientific Works of Hans Christian Ørsted,   p. 292 , and measurements)
*Hypotheses
"When it is not clear under which law of nature an effect or class of effect belongs, we try to fill this gap by means of a guess. Such guesses have been given the name conjectures or hypotheses." —Hans Christian Ørsted(1811) "First Introduction to General Physics" ¶18.  Selected Scientific Works of Hans Christian Ørsted,  p.297  (theoretical, hypothetical explanations of observations and measurements)
"... the statement of a law - A depends on B - always transcends experience." p.6 —Max Born (1949), Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance
*Predictions (reasoning including logical deduction
"The student of nature ... regards as his property the experiences which the mathematican can only borrow. This is why he deduces theorems directly from the nature of an effect while the mathematician only arrives at them circuitously." —Hans Christian Ørsted(1811) "First Introduction to General Physics" ¶17.  Selected Scientific Works of Hans Christian Ørsted,  p.297
 from hypothesis and theory)
*Experiments
Salviati speaks: "I greatly doubt that Aristotle ever tested by experiment whether it be true that two stones, one weighing ten times as much as the other, if allowed to fall, at the same instant, from a height of, say, 100 cubits, would so differ in speed that when the heavier had reached the ground, the other would not have fallen more than 10 cubits." p.61 —Galileo (1638), Two New Sciences as translated from Italian to English by Henry Crew and Alfonso di Salvio (1914). A more extended quotation is referenced on pp.80-81 by Forest Ray Moulton and Justus J. Schifferes (eds., Second Edition 1960) The Autobiography of Science (tests of all of the above) 
:Trying to fit CPT into this, you could make a very weak argument for "characterizations" (by using accounts from the Bible as your observations), and from that, the CPT could be considered a hypothesis. But beyond those two elements, CPT doesn't fit the scientific method at all. What does CPT predict? Can we test the theory? Not directly. Certainly some of the evidence used to support the theory can be tested, but without specific predictions, the hypothesis itself cannot.
:All of that aside, the biggest indicator that we're dealing with pseudoscience is the motivation of the hypothesis. With true science, the scientist looks at empirical data and then seeks a theory which fits the data. For CPT, on the other hand, Baumgardner has looked at the empirical data and then sought a theory which fits the Bible. This is in stark contrast to the scientific method. Furthermore, by attempting to fit his theory to this non-empirical source, Baumgardner emerges with a decidedly convoluted model. Or, as it's put in the pseudoscience article, he fails "to make reasonable use of the principle of parsimony".
Mistercow 21:50, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Psuedoscience?