Ayala's Arguments Of Induction?

Ayala noted that the way Darwin described his work to the public and what he actually did was contradictory. There seems to be two reasons as to why he could have done this. First, past definitions of hypotheses were meant for philosophical observations without any basis upon empirical evidence. Secondly, Darwin wanted to avoid the bias associated with empirical claims; that hypotheses were created as an aftermath of obtaining empirical evidence. Both Francis Bacon and John Stuart Mill were proponents of induction, a method in which one collects observations without any preconceived notions. It is only after one has collected tons of unbiased observations that they can come to make a universal truth.
Induction has both strengths and weaknesses under …show more content…
Ayala’s article attempts to show the disparity that Darwin faces against the methods of induction and the scientific method. His claims of following principles of induction were designed to mediate the views of others from his time. By fooling the public, Darwin was able to follow the principles of hypothesis creation in peace. It can be puppies123 - Summer 2015 Bio 100 - P2D1. Page 2 of 4 thought that by revealing his work on natural selection years after the creation of the theory, he managed to avoid empirical biases of his time. By avoiding the biases from the public eye, Darwin secretly followed the hypothetico-deductive method and formulated many hypotheses on barnacles, climbing plants, and earthworms with the preconceived notion of natural selection. He designed many experiments on organisms to see if natural selection was indeed the process by which organisms evolve overtime in the real world, thus, following the standards for testing a hypothesis under the criterions of