Applied predictive science has seen considerable advances in recent times, in relation to both its reliability and the extremely successful utility of its investigations. On the other hand, science that includes narratives about pre‑historic events, although the subject of intensive research, contains a disproportionate quantity of debate and uncertainty. The differences in these scientific fields have not been sufficiently discussed by the scientific community.
Should there be a distinction between predictive and retrodictive science, and if so, how does it affect standard methodology? The answer is a simple yes, because retrodictions are not predictions about the future nor do they include predictive experiments to discover new regularities of nature. Rather, they are limited to only applying the stablished regularities of nature to retrodict unique pre-historic events, so it is an applied science. This causes there to be three problems. The first problem is that the scientific community does not yet have a clear definition of a standard methodology for retrodictive science when experiments cannot be conducted which causes reduced reliability. The second problem is that when narratives retrodict models of chains of pre historic events, researchers rarely analyse the model to see if it has internal consistency with the established regularities of nature. Again, this causes reduced reliability. This situation has been able to arise because of the third problem; Narratives that retrodict unique pre historic events have no bearing on the safety or quality of life of humankind (as does applied predictive science) and so there is little incentive to produce reliable results, other than the search for truth. This is the opposite to experimental science and applied science in Engineering, Medicine etc… This means that narratives that retrodict unique pre-historic events can be completely wrong without causing harm to people.
To address these problems, it is proposed that researchers should evaluate the internal consistency of narratives that retrodict pre‑historic events by demonstrating that the narrative has theoretical alignment with the established regularities of nature.
A brief review of books and papers on retrodictive science and unique pre-historic events finds numerous reports where the proposed theory does not work. An example is the formation of the first stars. The following four references all contribute to the analysis:
Frenk: “We don’t understand how a single star forms, yet we want to understand how 10 billion stars form.” [1]
Tyson: “If none of us knew in advance that stars exist, frontline research would offer plenty of convincing reasons for why stars could never form.” [2]
Trimble and Aschwanden: “Most of us are persuaded that stars form out of more diffuse material which must, therefore, condense, contract, accrete etc. nevertheless, nearly all observations of pre-main-sequence and proto-stars are dominated by outflowing stuff.” [3]
Lada and Shu: “The origin of stars represents one of the most fundamental unsolved problems of contemporary astrophysics.” [4]
These statements indicate the current difficulties regarding star formation and that “nearly all observations” and research shows that the first star should not form on its own from the early universe hydrogen gas cloud. When we assess the proposed chain of events that could form the very first star against the established regularities of nature we find that the universal gas law tells us the hydrogen will fill the void of space rather than clump together. Of course, this is only a basic assessment and deserves further research.
Another example is Dormand and Woolfson’s conclusion regarding the solar nebula theories, they say: “Finally we may note that one difficulty common to all solar nebula theories concerns the rotation axis of the sun, which is at 7° to that of the system as a whole. It is not feasible that the rotation axis of the central body could be so inclined to that of the disk, or alternatively, that planets produced within the disk could systematically depart so much from its plane.” [5]
They have compared “all solar nebula theories” and the outcome is that no theory is better than the others, the difficulty is common to them all. They effectively say that the system was initially coplanar and then changed to have 7° between the sun and planets. Then they conclude that this process is “not feasible”, indicating it is a violation of the established regularities of nature. Most likely they have used the conservation of angular momentum to arrive at the conclusion. Therefore, the proposed theories need to be replaced with a completely new theory. Again, this is a basic assessment that deserves further research.
[1] Frenk, C. as quoted in “Surveys Scour the Cosmic Deep.” Science 303:1750, 19 March 2004.
[2] Tyson, Neil Degrasse, Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. 2007, p. 187.
[3] Trimble, V., Aschwanden, M. J., “Astrophysics in 2000.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 113:1025-1114, September 2001.
[4] Lada, Charles J., and Shu, Frank H., 4 May 1990. “The Formation of Sunlike Stars.” Science248:564.
[5] Dormand, John R., and Woolfson, M. M., The Origin of the Solar System: The Capture Theory, United Kingdom, E. Horwood, 1989, p. 48.
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