Fifty years ago, Thomas Kuhn came up with a philosophy for science that challenged the traditional viewpoint at the time. Fifty years later, his philosophy has captured the hearts and minds of many scientists.
Instead of using science philosophies such as “empirical falsification” to see if it will stand up to the test of time as highly regarded British philosopher Karl Popper believed, Kuhn on the other hand was an advocate of science being a puzzle to be solved that was conducted by bias researchers with occasional questioning of the paradigm, which may lead to a shift as a result of its complexity. Kuhn’s approach provided the establishment with more control over hindering new ideas of interpreting the data or coming up with new theories. .
There is a fundamental difference between operational science and historical science. Historical science is where various worldviews (different biases) can look at the same evidence but come up with different conclusions. And these conclusions are always based mostly on circumstantial evidence!
Lyellian geology (which came from James Hutton’s book “Theory of the Earth” ) had a substantial influence on Charles Darwin who read the three-volume series “Principles of Geology” by Charles Lynell. Lyellian geology eventually replaced “flood geology” which was the prevailing viewpoint for a long time that is based from the Bible.
Its principle known as “uniformitarianism” postulated that the same natural processes that operate now have always operated in the past along with the same rates, with the same laws. Recently, in Science Magazine, claims of a Mexican crater named Chicxulub being responsible for the dinosaurs demise! This hypothesis flies in the face of prevailing views about gradualism. The prevailing viewpoint in the scientific community 30 years ago was unwilling to consider anything outside its paradigm! A far cry on claiming that scientists are happy to be wrong because there is more to learn!
Luis Alvarez whose father proposed the impact hypothesis which claims that is how Dinosaurs went extinct rebuked those who protected the puzzle of gradualism.
In Live Science…
“The main culprit behind the end of the dinosaurs is now widely accepted to be an extraterrestrial collision of epic proportions, one that left behind the gargantuan crater of Chicxulub at Mexico. Evidence for this theory grows more ironclad over time – yet only 30 years ago it was often thought to be nonsense.“
“It took a long battle to win many scientists over, researchers say. One of those researchers is University of California at Berkeley geologist Walter Alvarez, who recalls the resistance to his team’s claim that such a major change could happen abruptly instead of gradually.”
“It flew in the face of the position that geologists and paleontologists at the time had for gradual explanations for everything that happened in the Earth’s past, a position that went by the name of uniformitarianism,” said Walter Alvarez. “The notion that this mass extinction was caused by an impact, or even the notion that there was a sudden mass extinction, raised a lot of dispute at the time, and people strongly challenged the idea.”
Catastrophic changes is more in line with flood geology than with gradualism. But what about this dinosaur extinction scenario? Is it plausible because more researchers are accepting it? No! This hypothesis is flawed, for example, scientists used assumption-laden dating and then forced that data into another flawed assumption-laden dating for its conclusion. Then there is the impact itself which leaves a major question mark, if true, an impact like that would have affected other animals and insects as well, not just dinosaurs!
The impact wasn’t a smart bomb which is able to limit its destruction to a certain area with a certain effect. So how could this impact at that level of destruction just select the dinosaurs for extinction while not affecting other animals? It’s not logical! The research does suggest, “other factors may have played an important role…” But what are those other factors that could be considered? Because the impact hypothesis without direct observations of what happened, is not realistic! Thus, this prevailing viewpoint is wrong too, just like gradualism!
The Bible provides evidence of what happened in the past which is a lot better than going into it, totally blind!