Why not? After all, you had said “the hard part with natural selection is not figuring out that it happens. It’s figuring out that it happens and it’s responsible for a large portion of evolutionary diversity.”
What I meant to say (and thought it was clear from the context, but was possibly wrong) was that you can’t talk about the important thing about natural selection—the “hard part” I’d mentioned earlier—without knowing about evolution. When people talk about natural selection as Darwin’s great achievement that could or could not have been achieved earlier, it is this hard part they are referring to (unless they’re confused and don’t understand this, in which case it this hard part they ought to be referring to).
It’s a fair actual question, even if the answer is “they couldn’t have,” so “the hell” doesn’t belong.
I think the question is rather on the rhetorical side (and I proceeded to give a sample of reasons for thinking so), so “the hell” is there to hint at the exasperation at a post that seems blithely naive.
You don’t. You could assume it was infinitely old, and get other things right.
Let me augment that: really old and slowly changing. By the end of the 18th century, geologists knew that shark teeth found on mountain tops are likely explained by the fact that a long time ago, these rocks were under water. The idea that geological processes happen very slowly, in “deep time”, and accumulate to produce huge changes was a direct inspiration to biologists in coming up with evolution.
The question is how something would have been possible, if it was possible. Your dismissal is too quick
Lukeprog’s post didn’t ask “how could they have discovered this through means other than with what modern science discovered it”. Instead, it said “these discoveries follow from a few basic first principles and they could have just thought about them, but didn’t”. And my dismissal works by pointing out that this view is incredibly naive and ignorant of the massive amount of evidence that modern science needed to accumulate before these discoveries could be made.
Lukeprog’s post didn’t ask “how could they have discovered this through means other than with what modern science discovered it”. Instead, it said “these discoveries follow from a few basic first principles and they could have just thought about them, but didn’t”
We were both wrong; here’s the relevant part:
The ancient atomists reasoned their way from first principles to materialism and atomic theory before Socrates began his life’s work of making people look stupid in the marketplace of Athens. Why didn’t they discover natural selection, too? After all, natural selection follows necessarily from heritability, variation, and selection, and the Greeks had plenty of evidence for all three pieces. Natural selection is obvious once you understand it, but it took us a long time to discover it.
So, the Greeks had evidence for some intermediary conclusions, and it is asserted that they could have worked their way from there to a good understanding of natural selection. Not necessarily using first principles to help discover natural selection.
You haven’t said why natural selection wouldn’t follow from those things listed (although saying why it would is the OP’s responsibility), or that the Greeks didn’t have enough evidence for those things. Instead, you addressed the possibility of going from those to a good understanding of natural selection, arguing that ”...to even formulate that hypothesis...requires...” and you listed things that the historical human discoverers actually required to get it, when the issue is the minimum it should have required.
But your response is an appeal to incredulity that puts far too much weight on what led people to discover evolution to convincingly address whether or not a different way was possible. Showing that a set of things was sufficient doesn’t show they were necessary.
As the OP thought the argument from “heritability, variation, and selection” to natural selection strong enough to be implicit, you should argue for a reason to believe he would have falsely believe that before dismissing the idea. Without that, all we have is a clash of intuitions, and on your part it doesn’t look like you’ve updated much on lukeprog’s apparent extreme confidence that it could have been so derived (which I infer from his unfortunate failure to argue for the point).
What I meant to say (and thought it was clear from the context, but was possibly wrong) was that you can’t talk about the important thing about natural selection—the “hard part” I’d mentioned earlier—without knowing about evolution. When people talk about natural selection as Darwin’s great achievement that could or could not have been achieved earlier, it is this hard part they are referring to (unless they’re confused and don’t understand this, in which case it this hard part they ought to be referring to).
I think the question is rather on the rhetorical side (and I proceeded to give a sample of reasons for thinking so), so “the hell” is there to hint at the exasperation at a post that seems blithely naive.
Let me augment that: really old and slowly changing. By the end of the 18th century, geologists knew that shark teeth found on mountain tops are likely explained by the fact that a long time ago, these rocks were under water. The idea that geological processes happen very slowly, in “deep time”, and accumulate to produce huge changes was a direct inspiration to biologists in coming up with evolution.
Lukeprog’s post didn’t ask “how could they have discovered this through means other than with what modern science discovered it”. Instead, it said “these discoveries follow from a few basic first principles and they could have just thought about them, but didn’t”. And my dismissal works by pointing out that this view is incredibly naive and ignorant of the massive amount of evidence that modern science needed to accumulate before these discoveries could be made.
We were both wrong; here’s the relevant part:
So, the Greeks had evidence for some intermediary conclusions, and it is asserted that they could have worked their way from there to a good understanding of natural selection. Not necessarily using first principles to help discover natural selection.
You haven’t said why natural selection wouldn’t follow from those things listed (although saying why it would is the OP’s responsibility), or that the Greeks didn’t have enough evidence for those things. Instead, you addressed the possibility of going from those to a good understanding of natural selection, arguing that ”...to even formulate that hypothesis...requires...” and you listed things that the historical human discoverers actually required to get it, when the issue is the minimum it should have required.
But your response is an appeal to incredulity that puts far too much weight on what led people to discover evolution to convincingly address whether or not a different way was possible. Showing that a set of things was sufficient doesn’t show they were necessary.
As the OP thought the argument from “heritability, variation, and selection” to natural selection strong enough to be implicit, you should argue for a reason to believe he would have falsely believe that before dismissing the idea. Without that, all we have is a clash of intuitions, and on your part it doesn’t look like you’ve updated much on lukeprog’s apparent extreme confidence that it could have been so derived (which I infer from his unfortunate failure to argue for the point).