Predictive ability of the Theory of Evolution

[wellwisher]

Mod note: Split thread from here.

It must also have predictive capability in order to be called a ‘theory’.

Prediction is where evolutionary theory is very thin. The theory can say something will evolve, but it can't predict what, when or even where? The theory is better at correlating historical data, than it is at predicting the future.

For example, let us use evolutionary theory to predict the next major change within humans. A theory should have predictive value.

I often thought, maybe we should call evolution, the evolutionary correlation, since it does that very well. Once it can make accurate future predictions than it can become upgraded to a theory again.

Let me give an analogous example. Say we had a theory of gravity, based on previous data, but all we could say about the future was that objects will fall down. It sort of lacks predictive value even if the theory can correlate past events very well.

Creationism is not designed to make predictions either but it is also a correlation of the past in its own way.

The debate if between the evolutionary and creationism correlations.

 

[spidergoat]

Evolution does make predictions about future discoveries. It predicted the existence of various "transitional" species, and they were later found. It predicted such things as drug resistance in bacteria and adaptation of the AIDS virus.

 

[iceaura]

Prediction is where evolutionary theory is very thin.

The theory has an unbroken record of successful prediction of otherwise completely unpredicted discoveries, events, and consequences, both specific and general, going back a full century - thousands of them, some of them downright spooky. The prediction of where a researcher digging in the local rocks could uncover a whale skeleton with the bones of functional legs, for example, was an amazing call.

The theory can say something will evolve, but it can't predict what, when or even where?

Of course not. It says, explicitly, that such predictions cannot be made beyond probability's range. You have seen many such cases, even in simpler and more easily described circumstances in science - nuclear physicists can say a uranium 235 atom will decay, but not when or where, for example.

Let me give an analogous example. Say we had a theory of gravity, based on previous data, but all we could say about the future was that objects will fall down.

If that's all you could say, it wouldn't even correlate very well with previous evidence - in which many things float up.

Meanwhile, the actual theory of gravity we have fails to explain or predict many basic, important things: it fails to explain the discovered masses of fundamental particles, and fails to predict the masses of newly discovered particles, for example.

So we should replace it with Bible based accounts of falling things? Or possibly teach other theories of gravity side by side with the "scientific" one, and let students choose?

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

Prediction is where evolutionary theory is very thin.....

No.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA210.html

 

[gmilam]

Prediction is where evolutionary theory is very thin.

Have you paid any attention to the advances in medicine over the last 100 years? Or even the last 20? It appears to me that we've figured something out.

 

[wellwisher]

The predictive value of evolutionary theory is not the same as other theories. I was trained as a chemical engineer and exams demonstrated another form of predictive value by giving the students problems to solve with various theory. This is not something a student could do with evolution. Evolution is more about reciting the theory. I figured something was missing? If one is a biologists they may never have been exposed to theory solid enough for students to make predictions on the fly. Most of the predictions appear to need experts, since it may need some fancy juggling.

I often try to suggest upgrades to make it predict easier, more in line with what an engineer is used to. But anything suggested is called creationism as though the theory is prefect.

 

[synthesizer-patel]

...... I was trained as a chemical engineer and....... .

and in other words you have a poor understanding of ToE, you have no idea of its predictive power, and lack any qualification to discuss it.

so why bother?

 

[iceaura]

The predictive value of evolutionary theory is not the same as other theories.

In what sense? The rich history of successful predictions using evolutionary theory rivals the best any other scientific theory we have. That it cannot predict the details of future complex events is nothing unusual.

The theories of geology cannot predict the details of next year's earthquakes. The theories of physics cannot predict the details of next month's weather. The theories of chemistry cannot predict the details of next week's chicken egg embryogenesis.

Do these failures of prediction invalidate those theories?

 

[wellwisher]

When you predict the past, it is much different than predicting the future. With the past you have two end points to draw a line. You can pick the end-points that give the curve you need. With the future, you have only one end point, with no idea of the curve. It is harder to fudge.

Let me give an example. Say I meet a new person. I will use the theory this person is a product of their environment. It is actually nature (DNA) and nurture (environment), but I will use the theory of only nurture for my example. I can go to that person's past and fit select data to my theory since my theory is partly true. There is no rule that says I have to fit the data connected to nature. I can be selective to make sure all the past predictions I offer, fit my theory.

To make a future prediction of that person, I can't control the data in quite the same way. The odds are the future event will contain both nature and nurture. I am better off in the past isolating what fits my theory of just nurture.

If my theory had been more complete, and had both nature and nurture, the future curve is less of a surprise. That fact that evolution can predict the past but not future, says to me, it does indeed contains truth, but something is missing since the future curve won't fit partial truth.

I figure there is another layer of cause and effect at work. The logical ones were connected to water, hydrogen bonding, and the boundary condition of the membrane. The genetics is already well documented with any theory having to be consistent with those observations.

 

[spidergoat]

But discovering aspects of the past can be a future event, such as predicting that we will find at some point in the fossil record, a snake with legs.

 

[Kennyc]

But discovering aspects of the past can be a future event, such as predicting that we will find at some point in the fossil record, a snake with legs.

But they already have vestigial legs.

 

[Ophiolite]

Since the theory of evolution contains both a random element (mutations and environmental change) and a directed element (natural selection etc.) it is self evidently incapable of offering specific predictions about future evolutionary patterns. Complaining that this is the case simply displays a deep ignorance of the mechanisms.

What the theory can do is make general predictions about future evolutionary possibilities. This is does successfully. You have zero argument to offer.

 

[Sarkus]

A theory does not need to predict future events... it need only predict gaps in the observed data that has been used to create the theory.

Some theories will also be able to predict future events, but that ability very much depends on the level of randomness and chaos within the system under examination... a system with more chaos will have less ability to predict future events.
And evolution is possibly one of the more chaotic mechanisms, and as such future prediction is difficult and only really possible at the most general of levels.

But the key is merely "predictability", not the need to predict future events.

 

[Walter L. Wagner]

Indeed, predictability is a superb strength of evolutionary theory. While we have predicted in advance of their discovery numerous fossil types (such as http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110413132949.htm posted earlier by HR), there is a huge untapped arena of predictions remaining to be predicted/confirmed, particularly in the field of molecular biology. There is a huge wealth of information yet to be gleaned from this predictability.

 

[Ophiolite]

We may now expect a predictable response by well wisher to the last three posts.

 

[iceaura]

When you predict the past, it is much different than predicting the future

Does the inability to predict future weather invalidate modern physics?

Does prediction of future discoveries and events count as predicting the future?

We are talking about predicting discoveries and the results of experiments, predicting types of event and future circumstances, predicting consequences not yet experienced, results not yet obtained. That's all future stuff.

With the past you have two end points to draw a line. You can pick the end-points that give the curve you need.

You also need a theory. Without a theory, you can't find the other points on a curve just by having two end points.

If your theory correctly predicts where you will find the other points on your curve, it has met one of the requirements of being a good theory - successful prediction.

BTW: we don't pick the endpoints, in evolutionary analysis. They are discovered, physical facts.

 

[wellwisher]

Biology is an observational and empirical science. I can understand where a sequential rational analysis might seem like magic for those not trained to reason.

The topic is proof of evolution. I have shown proof of evolution by showing how some bulk parameters of life have evolved logically from the potentials within the membrane boundary condition.

Let me ask this question; how does current evolutionary theory explain the observation that bioactive proteins are left handed?

 

[rpenner]

I think what you want to say is that a majority of life on Earth only used the left-handed amino acids when the amino acid exists in left- and right-handed forms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(chemistry)#In_biology

So why do you believe that evolutionary theory unique speaks to this when there exist non-living systems already that amplify chirality of a population of mixed enantiomers?
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB040.html

Also, while left-handed amino acids are popular, they are not the only choice. Some bacteria use right-handed amino acids and the common descent does predict that outliers of biochemistry exist in fringe groups like bacteria or a rare genus of multicellular life. (Because if they were popular, they wouldn't be outliers on the tree of common ancestry.)

http://www.hhmi.org/news/waldor20090918.html (Cholera can swing right-handed)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC515371/ (Drosophila have interesting stereochemistry, D-amino acids are ubiquitous in bacterial cell walls)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peptidoglycan