Has Science and Reason Taken Away Some of the "Mysticisim" of the world for you?

@Roadsterrider how much earlier than 10k years ago we talking here ? (Asians crossed over like 8k BC right?)

@AthrillatheHunt The tracks being uncovered in NM are 21 to 23,000 years old.

@Roadsterrider wow!
That blows the land bridge theory out of the water .
Means people were here BEFORE the last ice age .

@AthrillatheHunt Something else that blows the mind is fossils that lean towards dinosaurs here before the land masses separated. There is a fossil bed in South America along the coast, and the other half of the fossil bed is in Africa where SA separated from Africa. Science is still scrambling for answers. A lot of what we see as science is just theory.

@Roadsterrider Science is about making models. An actual theory means models based on evidence can be designed and tested. Conjecture without evidence means no modeling.

@Roadsterrider
Science starts with observation. We look at the world, and we notice things. Many of these things seem to be related, and so we try to come up with an explanation as to how they’re related. This explanation is called a Theory… we can think of these as ‘Big T’ Theories, because they are based on demonstrable evidence and they have wide explanatory power. Scientists then test the Theory in order to prove that it is wrong. This is an important point, and it seems to constantly confuse non-scientists. Science doesn’t try to prove that a Theory is correct. Science tries to prove that the Theory is wrong, and the Theory is accepted only so long as we are unable to show that it is wrong.

Contrast this with our everyday ‘theories’ (my neighbour is probably cheating on her taxes… my friend is having an affair), which are simply vague hunches or convenient fictions - we can think of those as small-t theories. Usually we go looking for evidence to support these ‘theories’, and it is common for us to ignore evidence that contradicts them. It seems to me that it's these vague hunches or convenient fictions that people have in mind when they say that something or other is ‘just a theory’.

In fact, a Theory is the acme of scientific achievement.

@Roadsterrider


ALL scientific notions are called "theories" as part of the fundamental skepticism and *humility* which scientists have to have.

The history of science has shown that many notions are either wrong (flat Earth, young Earth) or are only true within certain confines.

Physics is the branch of natural science which wants to get "the" correct theories about ALL of the basic/fundamental forces/fields in nature. Think of Bacon taking "all knowledge as [his] Province"; Physics claims all Nature (at its most fundamental levels) as its Province.

Over the millenia, theories have improved, but we are now at a point where we often don't just discard a useful theory which is not of complete, general applicability; but we try to make clear the boundaries of its applicability.

For instance, we now know Newton's mechanics (classical mechanics) is not the best theory of mechanics. However, it's a very good theory for many practical situations we encounter in everyday life. To be more clear, Newtonian mechanics gives great results for the regime that

1) distances are not "microscopic" in the technical sense (i.e., where quantum mechanics is important; this also mesns energies/temperatures are not very small);

2) speeds are not relativistic (technically, where ((v/c)^2)/2 << 1);

3) masses are not large enough to sffect time, etc.

@BlueSkyKing This is true, but when something is found that refutes the model, they assume the newly found item is incorrect, not the model. Evidence that doesn't fit the model gets rejected. The model is that as another comment stated, is that people walked across a land bridge 10,000 years ago, so any evidence that contradicts this date for human in North America must be wrong.

@Roadsterrider Wait a minute.

If there is a LARGE body of evidence which supports an existing theory, then a piece of contradictory evidence is NATURALLY given a lot of scrutiny. Skepticism isn't only for existing theories, it is also for outlier data.

If you want a real hoot, look at the data for the cosmological constant (Λ), as measured via different methods. The error bars don't touch or overlap even a little. lol

@SomeMichGuy If you read about places like White Sands and the footprints, it isn't met with scrutiny, it is met with "That isn't possible, we know people weren't here till 12,000 years later."

@Roadsterrider Is this from armchair observers?

People in the field with the proper background(s) need to review this. From the presentation on Nova, it seems that the researchers themselves were surprised, and that it was rechecked.

It makes a big statement, and, if verified, it will have to be incorporated into the reconstructed narrative of homonids in the Western Hemisphere.

I don't see it as negating the land bridge at all--esp. with DNA evidence suggesting that the typical "Native" person's genes were formed up there at the right time--but differences (if any) in genes from S. American natives might now be explainable, and it suggests a separate, earlier route (and perhaps a means of having a South American "cradle of civilization", which has been a matter of speculation). Perhaps these homonids died out...

@SomeMichGuy I read every article I see on archaeology, anthropology, geology, these things interest me, many articles include the struggle to get something recognized that goes against the grain. Me saying it is probably fits your definition of "arm chair", but I am repeating the statements of in many cases, the words of the scientist who found an object.

@Roadsterrider You are doing more than most! Good!

Where are you finding these articles?

@Roadsterrider Newer and better evidence always trumps old. No buts about it. A major attribute of science is self correcting.