Science is not universal

When Isaac Newton published his Principia with its laws of motion, he asserted their universal application. Since he had unified motion on the surface of the earth with the motion of the solar system, it was a powerful argument. Nevertheless, to claim universal application excessively extrapolated and interpolated far beyond any data available at the time.

But you reply, That is how science works. Propose a theory and then test its limits. Precisely. So the limits are not known when a theory is proposed or even when it is confirmed. The limits of a theory are only known when it is superseded.

In the eighteenth century people believed Newton. The universe was believed to be a mechanical clock. Mechanistic thinking was very influential.

In the twentieth century Newton’s laws were superseded by quantum mechanics and relativity theory. Now the limits are known and Newton’s laws are not universal. Newton was wrong.

Should anyone ever have believed that Newton’s laws were universal? No. Accepting the universality of an unsuperseded theory takes science too literally. The universe is not a mechanism. The scope of even the best theories is less than universal.

Yet science operates with an optimistic methodology so the proposed scope of a theory is always beyond what the data allow. Only after a theory is tested is its actual scope eventually discovered.

Charles Darwin proposed a theory of biological evolution whose basic principle is descent with modification. That is, descendants of organisms may differ from their ancestors, so much so that new biological species develop. Such descendants are different in degree but not in kind, even if classified as separate species.

What is the scope of biological descent? As a scientist Darwin asserted that descent was universal. It is often supposed that evolution entails universal common descent, but that is a statement of its applicable scope, not of any scientific law.

While Darwin’s version of evolution has been modified, Neo-Darwinism is unsuperseded within the mainstream scientific community. Should people believe that the scope of evolution is universal? No, for the same reason that Newton’s claim of universality should never have been believed.

Certainly scientists act as though the scope of evolution is universal, but that is how science works: assume the greatest scope and search for limits. The mainstream scientific community has so far not found the limits. That is an expression of their ignorance, not of their knowledge.

The scope of common descent is the scope of the mechanisms for it. They are not two theories (contra NCSE). The result of the mechanisms such as natural selection is common descent. The extent of common descent is the extent of natural selection.

In the twentieth century people believed Darwin. The universe was believed to have completely evolved. Evolutionary thinking was very influential.

But philosophers, theologians, and others do know something about the limits to Darwin’s theory. An excellent case can be made that human beings are different in kind, not just in degree from other organisms. Mortimer J. Adler’s book The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes provides a philosophical argument. Others can point to scriptures, traditions, and evidence that support the same premise.

We do know there are limits to evolution, as there are to all mechanisms. We don’t know all of the limits, but we do know there exists at least one limit: human life cannot have evolved from non-human life. The science community should be searching for all the limits to evolution.