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Andrew, Wow...that was one helluva post! But to be fair to fairies running inside motor cars, perhaps you need to be a little more critical of your own scientific concept. Science is erected around testable hypotheses which remain only until they can be disproved. Being a motor-mechanic who has EXPERIENCED how the internal combustion operates is not the same as seeing how it works. It's back to Schrodinger's cat... Yes, the mechanic knows the machine consumes oxygen and hydrocarbons; and sure, he knows carbon dioxide and water come out of the exhaust pipe. Perhaps he can detect the changes in temperature and vibrations as it operates. But he cannot actually see the combustion take place without altering the environment under which the machine operates. He cannot SEE combustion as a global "truth"; only experience its effects. Saying that all internal combustion engines operate in the way he believes at all times and in all possible realities is as much an act of faith as the Great Pumpkin or the Easter Beagle. In other words, it is the difference between an Inference and a Deduction. By the same token, palaeontology is a science based around effects, be they fossils, isotope data or whatever. Similarly, phylogenies test our paradigms, not what really happened. We assume that as our paradigms get better, the differences between the two get smaller; but we can never know. While we can infer relationships; we cannot deduce them. Best wishes, Neale. >From Neale Monks' PowerBook, at... Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, London, SW7 5BD Internet: N.Monks@nhm.ac.uk, Telephone: 0171-938-9007
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