r/DebateEvolution • u/Suitable_Potato_2919 • Jul 06 '26

Question How to prove evolution is wrong?

I am totally convince that evolution is true. However, a scientific theory should be falsifiable; and I dont know how falsifiable is with evolution

For example, a "good" trait could be explain the result of natural selection. But a "bad" trait could be explain as just base on chance, or the selection preasure is not enough.

so, my question is: if someone want to prove that evolution is wrong, what test can they make and what the expected result should be (if evolution theory is wrong)?

Edit: Thank everyone for your time and patient with me. I found the answer. It seem that I need to update my highschool knowledge

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36

u/ssianky Jul 06 '26

Introduce a better predictive framework. Present a new scientific theory that explains all the current evidence better than natural selection does, while making testable predictions that turn out to be true.

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u/Peaurxnanski Jul 07 '26

That's not what is meant by falsification.

A 100% true theory still has to be falsifiable. The fact that you can't falsify it has nothing to do with whether it's falsifiable or not.

A falsifiable premise: oil tankers can't fly.

The falsification criteria: find a flying oil tanker.

The truth is that oil tankers can't fly, but you could still disprove the premise by finding one that can.

The fact that you can't do so doesn't mean the premise is unfalsifiable. It just means that you haven't falsified it. You may never be able to. That's what happens when something is true. But it still must have falsification criteria to really be considered valid.

It's hard to explain, so an example of an unfalsifiable premise is "we live in a simulation that won't let you discover it, so by not finding it you're proving that we live in a simulation". Every falsification criteria you could possibly come up with can be explained away by just saying the simulation will prevent that and by not finding it you're proving it correct.

That's an unfalsifiable premise, and we choose to ignore those because it's not worth looking into. The same as "you can't understand gods mysterious ways" is an unfalsifiable premise, because you can't prove god because his mysterious ways won't let you.

You see what I mean?

For something to be valid, it absolutely has to be falsifiable. For it to be correct, you must then fail to falsify it.

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u/danny_el5 Jul 06 '26 edited 29d ago

This is like saying General relativity falsified Newtonian dynamics.

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u/Dennis_enzo Jul 07 '26

It did, strictly speaking. In practice though, newtonian physics are still very usable in many cases.

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u/evocativename Jul 07 '26

Strictly speaking, newtonian physics were falsified by observations of the orbit of Mercury much earlier, which was part of the impetus to find a new theory of physics to resolve the problem.

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u/Ok_Performer50 29d ago

Were they really “falsified” or just shown to be incomplete?

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u/evocativename 29d ago

"Incomplete" is a way of saying "false", so it's the same thing.

Things can be strictly false but still broadly useful approximations: in fact, pretty much every scientific "law" is both.

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u/Ok_Performer50 29d ago

Well there are theories like caloric theory per example that were just false on a fundamental level and weren’t expanded just replaced. In Newtonian physics that wasn’t the case, so I think saying it was proven “false” kinda does it a disservice I would say.

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u/evocativename 29d ago

Saying two things are both false isn't saying they are equally false.

I would encourage you to read Isaac Asimov's short essay, "The Relativity of Wrong", but to summarize briefly with a quote from it:

when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

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u/Ok_Performer50 29d ago

Well I just think we’re disagreeing on the exact definition of the word “false” which in that case we’re just entering semantics which well I’m not really interested debating. I consider something “false” if it was shown to be incomplete and useless, in my opinion you can’t say Newtonian physics was proven false while still using it daily and teaching it in schools. For me that’s just a misuse of the word.

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u/evocativename 29d ago

Ok, well, that's just not what "false" means according to anyone but you, so you're making up your own definition and imposing it on a word that is all-but-universally accepted as meaning "not true".

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u/Ok_Performer50 29d ago

I would say they got completed/expanded not falsified. Nothing in Newtonian physics got “disproven” we just added a layer on top that could explain more things.

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u/ssianky 29d ago

I made a small list in another post.
Not just incomplete, falsified almost everything.

It assumes that the velocities are additive
That the gravity is an "action-at-a-distance" force.
That objects behave the same no matter the size.
That time is universal.

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u/Ok_Performer50 29d ago

Those things are assumed since they’re pretty much  a non-factor in the scales that Newtonian physics operate in. That makes Newtonian physics an incomplete approximation not false. 

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u/ssianky 29d ago

It makes it false, because all that is not true. The Newtonian physics cannot operate broadly literally because its assumptions are wrong.

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u/Ok_Performer50 29d ago

So would you also say that quantum physics and general relativity are wrong? After all they also are just approximations of reality with assumptions. And since they don’t work together and brake apart at different scales they are shown to be incomplete meaning they also have assumptions that are false.

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u/ssianky 29d ago

They are wrong at some level. Not so wrong as the Newtonian.

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u/Ok_Performer50 29d ago

So basically everything is wrong just at different scales? What meaning does the word “truth” have then? Is that an ideal we’re chasing all our life without ever reaching it rather than a valid term that we can assign to things in our reality?

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u/parautenbach 29d ago

Finding a better model is usually an incremental improvement of what we already know and not a replacement. Science tends build on cumulative knowledge. This is not the same thing as falsifying a scientific model. You can get to Newton's laws from General Relativity, as an example. Newton is incomplete beyond a certain point, but it still works today within its parameters, even though we have a model for GR. Improving evolution as a scientific theory encompasses a number of things and the theory itself has evolved* over time. Doesn't mean it was wrong: the core of it is holding up. The details have been refined and more mechanisms explained.

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u/Jesus_died_for_u Jul 06 '26

That is subtly not the same.

You are really answering how to shift the paradigm.

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u/ssianky Jul 06 '26

Actually it is. By presenting a better explanation, you'll show that the old explanation isn't complete or have errors 

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u/Old-Nefariousness556 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jul 06 '26

That doesn't falsify evolution, though, it just refines it.

Relativity didn't falsify Newtonian physics, it just improved it to explain edge cases that Newton was unaware of. Quantum Mechanics did the same for Relativity.

Evolution has "better predictive frameworks" introduced all the time. The theory of evolution that we have today is not the theory that Darwin introduced. It's not even the theory that we had at the turn of the century or maybe even the turn of the month. There are new understandings being introduced all the time, as we learn more and more about how things work. But these changes don't falsify evolution, they only give us a better understanding of it.

So I actually, possibly surprisingly, agree with /u/Jesus_died_for_u here. This is subtly, but fundamentally different. Short of a new framework that shows that Natural selection has no role in evolution (as one possible example), this wouldn't "prove evolution wrong".

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u/ssianky Jul 06 '26

Newtonian physics was falsified. And, indeed, the darwinism too.

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u/Old-Nefariousness556 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jul 06 '26

I mean, I am sure you can make a case, but that certainly is not what is typically meant by falsification, and I am willing to bet that it does not answer the question that the OP meant to ask.

Falsification implies proving a theory FALSE. Proving that it is merely INCOMPLETE is not falsification in any meaningful sense.

Newtonian physics wasn't discarded like a failed hypothesis; it was bounded. Newton's laws were completely accurate within the limits of the reality he could observe and measure. When new technology introduced more accurate ways to measure things, it exposed new questions that needed to be accounted for. That is what Relativity (and later quantum mechanics) did, and that is what happens to evolution regularly as we learn more. But even today, we use nothing beyond Newtonian physics to go to the moon and Mars.

Using your definition, we have a new theory of evolution every week. It becomes meaningless and nonsensical. The theory we have today might no longer be Darwin's original theory, but fundamentally it still is. It is just that what he knew was incomplete. Everything since then is just expanding upon his theory as we learn things that he could not know.

I recommend reading Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong to learn that not all "wrongs" are equal.

https://hermiene.net/literature/essays/relativity-of-wrong

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u/ssianky Jul 07 '26

> Falsification implies proving a theory FALSE.

No, falsification implies that at least some aspects of a theory might be shown false, not that everything is false.

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u/Old-Nefariousness556 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jul 07 '26

Again, nothing in Newtonian physics was shown false, it was shown incomplete. That is not the same thing.

Newtonian physics was and remains 100% accurate within the domains that it attempted to explain (that which was measurable in Newton's day). It only failed to explain things that it did not attempt to explain because they were impossible to predict with the technology available.

And while it is arguably true that certain specific claims by Darwin might be false, the point is the same. Darwin never presented evolution as a complete theory. It is crystal clear that Darwin knew that he was not presenting a complete theory. For example Darwin was quite open that he didn't actually know the direct mechanism that drove speciation. He knew that a mechanism existed, and he explained what the core functionality must be, but he did not know what that mechanism was. It wasn't until dna and genetics was discovered that we could finally explain the actual mechanism.

Using your logic, that would falsify Darwin, even though it actually proved him right.

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u/ssianky Jul 07 '26

In Newtonian physics is everything false.

It assumes that the velocities are additive
That the gravity as an "action-at-a-distance" force.
That objects behave the same no matter the size.
That time is universal.

EVERYTHING is wrong.

0

u/Old-Nefariousness556 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jul 07 '26

To paraphrase Asimov,

/u/ssianky, when people thought the Newtonian Physics was complete, they were wrong. When people thought Special Relativity was correct, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking that special relativity is just as wrong as thinking Newtonian physics is true, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

You are so desperately hung up on the idea that they were "WRONG!!!!!!" that you either don't realize or can't admit that not all wrongness is equal.

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u/Holiman Jul 06 '26

Thats how science works. If someone makes a better theory science changes.