Robert Deyes at Uncommon Descent continues his analysis of Signature in the Cell.
A sound approach to scientific investigation does not necessarily bring with it a mandatory requirement to be a 'nose to the grindstone' experimentalist. Indeed scientists can and often do take data that others have amassed and interpret it in light of their own understanding of the matter at hand. Therein lies a lesson that, as science historians will note, is backed by an impressive list of prominent cases. In fact Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and even Charles Darwin challenged the viewpoints of their day through their own theoretical interpretations of reality. For Darwin this meant for the most part collecting data from botanists, breeders, ecologists, and paleontologists and constructing a paradigm-shifting synthesis on the evolution of life that did not necessarily hinge on his own data. Both Einstein's two papers on relativity and Newton's opus Principia were theoretical manifestos that at the time they were published had little experimental support.
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