Quotes by Elliott Sober

Elliott Sober

“Methodological naturalism” and “metaphysical naturalism” are terms that often surface in the continuing battle between evolutionary biology and creationism/intelligent design. The methodological thesis says that scientific theories shouldn’t postulate supernatural entities; the metaphysical thesis says that no such entities exist. In this debate, God is the supernatural entity at issue; the question isn’t whether science gets to talk about mathematical entities if Platonism is correct.

Design

Intelligent

Issues

“Simpler is always better” is an overstatement.

Overstatement

“Tiger is a natural kind” and “Tiger is a historical particular” are incompatible with each other, and evolutionary biology provides a reason for favoring the latter over the former.

Biology

Historical

Kind

Another way to test hypotheses about adaptation is to consider trait variation across a group of species instead of focusing on the trait of a single species. Rather than seeking to explain why polar bears have fur of a certain thickness, one tries to explain why bears in colder climates have thicker fur than bears in warmer climates. The former problem is hard to solve, since it is hard to say exactly what fur thickness polar bears should have if natural selection guided the evolution of that trait.

Should Have

Tests

Trying

Biologists now pretty universally regard vitalism as a vestige of a bygone age.

Age

Biologist

Regard

Creationists have long held that evolutionary theory is atheistic; defenders of the theory do the theory no favor when they agree.

Favors

Long

Theory

Current organisms have a higher probability of sharing a single code if the common ancestry hypothesis is true than they’d have if the hypothesis of separate ancestry were true. That is, the simpler hypothesis has the higher likelihood in the technical sense of “likelihood” used in statistics.

Ancestry

Common

Statistics

Darwin and his successors have railed against the fallacy of confusing the current utility of a trait with the reason the trait evolved. For example, Darwin argued that skull sutures in mammals did not evolve because they facilitate live birth; the sutures were in place well before live birth evolved. Checking the chronological order in which different traits evolved in a lineage is one way to test an adaptive hypothesis; the fact of common ancestry is what makes that checking possible.

Confusing

Order

Skulls

Darwin repeatedly used the hypothesis of common ancestry as a platform on which to build his various ideas about testing hypotheses concerning natural selection. He also argued that adaptive similarities provide little or no evidence for common ancestry. Although this second claim needs to be fine-tuned, Darwin was right that ample evidence for common ancestry can exist even if none of the characteristics we observe were caused to evolve by natural selection.

Ancestry

Ideas

Littles

Deism claims that God creates the universe and the laws of nature and then is hands-off, with everything that subsequently happens in nature being due to natural processes.

Hands

Law

Natural

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Accurate

Advice

Aesthetic

Age

Alternatives

America

Ancestry

Arguing

Believe

Biologist

Biology

Body

Circumstances

Claims

Common

Community

Compatible

Confusing

Connections

Deism

Design

Different

Doctrine

Doe

Doors

Dualism

Environment

Events

Evidence

Evolution

Example

Existence

Experiments

Facts

Favors

Frills

Games

Giving

Goal

Groups

Hands

Helping

Historical

Ideas

Ignorance

Influence

Intelligent

Interesting

Issues

Judging

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Quotes by Elliott Sober

Elliott Sober

“Simpler is always better” is an overstatement.

“Tiger is a natural kind” and “Tiger is a historical particular” are incompatible with each other, and evolutionary biology provides a reason for favoring the latter over the former.

Biologists now pretty universally regard vitalism as a vestige of a bygone age.

Creationists have long held that evolutionary theory is atheistic; defenders of the theory do the theory no favor when they agree.

Current organisms have a higher probability of sharing a single code if the common ancestry hypothesis is true than they’d have if the hypothesis of separate ancestry were true. That is, the simpler hypothesis has the higher likelihood in the technical sense of “likelihood” used in statistics.

Deism claims that God creates the universe and the laws of nature and then is hands-off, with everything that subsequently happens in nature being due to natural processes.

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