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LINGUISTIX&LOGIK, Tony Marmo's blog
Tuesday, 17 August 2004

Topic: Cognition & Epistemology

Testing Infallible Hypotheses



It has been said that Always Right statements or theories are useless for Science. This refers to conjunctions like the hypothesis below:

(1) Either Socrates is human or he is not.


The evident problem with (1) is that it cannot be tested. Similarly, one may criticise an Oedipus complex theory that could explain every behaviour, such as:

(2)
a. Subject A killed a police officer because he had Oedipus complex.
b. Subject B did not kill a police officer because he had Oedipus complex too.


Now, I question how far can this sort of critique be a strong argument against some theories that deal with more complex situations. One example is a new theory that aims to propose an old puzzle in the field of Zoology: why are there large mammals in Africa but not in South American forests? Here I quote one important article from the Fapesp Magazine about recent developments:


[A new]Theory proposes that excessive rainfall altered the vegetation and eliminated large mammals in South America, but preserved them in Africa. (Link)


The theory advanced by de Vivo and Carmignotto proposes that the same explanation is valid for completely different cases:

(3)
a. Large mammals were extinct in South America by the excessive humidity factor.
b. Large mammals were preserved in Africa by the excessive humidity factor.


The justification for this is complex:


South America
It rained so excessively that the ancient areas of the savanna-cerrado ( wooded savanna, typical of Brazil) - the excellent habitat for medium and large mammals, generally situated intropical of moderate to low humidity - turned themselves extremely dense and closed, with lots of trees, and practically became extensions of their neighboring tropical rainforests.
(...)the largest animals, concentrated in the central-north portion of South America, did not find a nearby environment compatible with their style of life. There was no savanna for them.


Africa
In Africa, the majority of the mammals of large size, generally herbivores that lived in bands, managed to migrate to new zones of open vegetation, with few trees and some pasture. As a consequence of the climatic change, this type of vegetal formation appeared in areas that are today desserts, situated in the northern and southern extremities of the continent.


I hereby open the floor for anyone who wants to debate the issue.

Posted by Tony Marmo at 08:23 BST

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