Barry Donovan said:

> In his 2002 paper The Elusive Honey Bee Dance "Language"
> Hypothesis Adrian quotes Popper and Lakatos as saying in
> effect that a theory must be falsifiable.

Popper's rule of thumb is a good one, but it is not an absolute.
Specific subjects in some branches of science deal with subject
matter that appear to defy "testing" (formation of the universe,
the development of life on Earth, etc), but this does not imply
that the theories developed in these areas are automatically to
be dismissed as bunk.

In a matter of "animal behavior", such as bee foraging, we
see significant "variable behavior" that in many cases can
overpower the "controlled situation" we try to create.

Think of swarming as a good example.  There is NO foolproof
method that can prevent swarming.  No matter what we do
as beekeepers, we would be fools to make flat statements
about swarming.  Given this sort of situation, it should
be clear that experiments in "animal behavior" are not as
reliable as they would be if one were working with inanimate
objects.

So, there may well be a large set of "bee behaviors" that would be
frustratingly difficult explain with strictly "falsifiable theories".

Also, one must recognize the shades of distinction between
theories that are:

a) logically inconsistent
b) empirically falsifiable
c) contradicts observations

A theory that is logically inconsistent can be disproven
without any experiments.  The theory "disproves" itself.

"Falsification" is a structural thing.  One can develop a
theory that is falsifiable, and be forced to wait decades
for technology to advance to the point where experiments
are possible.  But if the technology never matures to the
point where the proposed test(s) can be done, is the theory
"Unfalsifiable"?  Of course not!  On a practical level, it
really is, but the theory can claim to simply be "waiting"
for "better equipment".

Theories that contradict observations are simply "wrong",
even though they may not be logically inconsistent or
empirically unfalsifiable.  (There are a very tiny number
of theories that have contradicted prior observations and
have later been proven correct by superior experimental
technologies.  In these cases, the prior observations were
"wrong", or more often, not as accurate as the newer
observations.  This seldom happens in any area of inquiry
other than those that can be summarized as "hair splitting".)

In science as a whole, most theories are offered as explanations
for existing sets of observations, rather than offered in advance
of observations.  In these cases, the whole issue of "falsifiability"
can get a bit confusing.  To make matters worse, the theorists
rarely do the experiments and make the observations first hand.

> Wenner and Wells in their 1990 book showed how the
> criteria that are generally accepted as indicative
> of the truth change about every 30-50 or so years.

I'm not sure which specific "criteria" are claimed to have
changed at what points, but this sort of claim is a very
telling verbal parting shot, one only taken from debating
positions that are going down in flames.

It should be made clear that while technical advances allow
us to be ever-more demanding in terms of accuracy, the basic
steps for finding "truth" have remained the same for far
longer than any of us have been alive.

As a practical example of this, one might say that Einstein
"proved Newton wrong", and thereby made the "criteria for truth"
more rigorous.  One saying this would be wrong.

Newton was RIGHT!  Nearly every physical object you can see or
touch was designed using nothing more than Newton's view of the
universe.  While relativistic effects are important in a very small
number of areas, no one who designs a skyscraper or even plots a
interplanetary trajectory for a space probe needs use more
than Newton's laws.  Newton was not only "close enough" for his
time, he was "close enough" for the foreseeable future for the
overwhelming majority of human activities.

As for the specific falsifiability of either "odor" or "dance", I
offered a practical test of "odor vs dance" just this week:
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0306c&L=bee-l&F=&S=&P=5487as
as an example of how the "not falsifiable" argument is nothing
more than rhetorical "dance".

The silence that met this proposal has been deafening,
which is exactlt what I expected.


        jim (Theories exist describing him as a
           paleoconservative about theories.
           These theories lack proof.)

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