Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.

(1 Timothy 1:6-7) KJV

Inductive reasoning is when you used your premise, say, heliocentricity, as evidence for your premise. It’s also called circular reasoning. Now, if you take another premise, say an ancient Earth, and use it to develop an experimental procedure which appears to prove that the Earth is ancient, that’s circular reasoning too.

So what happens when you use the first circle of reasoning to prove the second circle of reasoning? It proves the first circle of reasoning. This is called inductive, reductive circular reasoning.

No one would ever get away with doing something like that, right? That sort of thing wouldn’t be allowed, right? Wrong. Inductive reductive circular reasoning is the very fabric of the popular science (SciPop) paradigm. Here’s an example which shows how SciPop axioms II, III and IV have been woven together:

Inductive Reductive Circular Reasoning

• By assuming heliocentricity we can use stellar parallax to confirm heliocentricity.
• We also assume that stars are distant suns and galaxies (synonymy).
• By assuming that stars are distant suns we can use the assumption of heliocentricity to calculate vastly inflated distances to them.
• The vastly inflated distances may be used with stellar spectroscopy to support the assumption of an ancient Earth (needed for biological evolution) as follows:
  1. spectra show that radioisotope ratios in stars match the ratios we measure on Earth,
  2. by assuming that the light has traveled for billions of years across the distances contrived by assuming heliocentricity,
  3. this supports the assumption that the rate of nuclear decay has been constant for billions of years.

Deducing this induction was what gave us the idea for the featured image, reduce, reuse, recycle. SciPop has been quite diligent in making sure that they can squeeze every bit of theoretical significance from even the most minor discoveries.

The theme of reduce, reuse, recycle comes from observing the intricate way in which the assorted premises of popular science (SciPop) have been woven into a system of inductive, reductive circular reasoning.

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