The Critical Rationalist Vol. 01 No. 04 ISSN: 1393-3809 31-Dec-1996
5.1 Tautology...
4.6 Testing?
(43) I have presented and analysed Organismic Darwinism as an essentially straightforward theory--whose scientific status is not problematic. However, this has not been a universally accepted position--and this brings me to the central topic for this article.
(44) In fact, the status of Organismic Darwinism is a very vexing question, which has received considerable attention in both the biological and philosophical literature; the debate has been positively acrimonious on occasion.
(45) I shall consider two closely related questions: whether Darwinism may be a mere tautology, or, failing that, whether it may be irrefutable (and thus metaphysical). These two issues are commonly conflated--for example by Maynard Smith (1969). It is of course true that all tautologies are untestable and therefore (in a trivial sense) metaphysical, but the converse does not hold--theories may well be metaphysical yet not tautologous. Thus, given that Darwinism is not actually tautological then its testability becomes entirely moot, and should be considered in its own right.
5.1 Tautology...
4.6 Testing?
The Critical Rationalist Vol. 01 No. 04 ISSN: 1393-3809 31-Dec-1996
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TCR Issue Timestamp: Tue Dec 31 17:37:08 GMT 1996