Taxacom: novel predictions again

[John Grehan]

Les, reflecting on your statement further that"Falsifying biogeographic
mechanisms is extremely difficult. So I wouldn't get too excited when your
model makes a correct prediction. Nice that it did, but it explains
nothing."

I would be interested to know your perspective on novel predictions. Is a
research program that makes novel predictions (about facts then unknown)
more interesting than research programs that just reiterate what is already
known? Correspondingly, which is more interesting, a research program that
has predicted new facts that have been independently corroborated, vs a
research program that has made no novel predictions, let alone any that are
independently corroborated.

Of course you can see that I am more interested in research programs that
generate novel predictions. Many decades ago there was a Creationist story
about geology that argued that the mid-ocean ridges were the cracks left
over when the water beneath the earth's crust suddenly shot up into the
atmosphere and flooded the earth. Nice theory, but I would have been more
impressed if they had presented the theory and predicted the existence of
the spreading ridges before they were discovered by geologists.

I would end by noting that this is not a matter of just one novel
prediction, but at least several that have been identified in
panbiogeography. What do corroborated novel predictions? When Einstein
predicted the bending of light he was predicting something that was then
unknown by observation. Later corroborated, is that novel prediction
nothing to get excited about? And yet the prediction was seen to be
exciting enough to verify. Maybe it is only processes (or theories about
processes) that are explanatory, not the facts predicted in consequence.
I'll leave it to any philosopher of science experts on the list to weigh in
on that.

Cheers, John



-- 
https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhepialidsoftheworld.com.au%2F&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C9c482029c17743c86b3c08dcd4d9abc3%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638619279022887095%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=YCaMCx%2FueYK%2FmshQbgalZm3zXkJ4Ajrey7%2BDYlNaQh4%3D&reserved=0 (use the 'visit archived web site'
link, then the 'Ghost Moth Research page' link.