Life on Earth older than thought?

[porphy]

A few observations on my part. I think the discussion is very interesting. I'm not here to help anyone out, but more to give my own view of the questions involved, which admittedly are complex and have entertained very much the best minds for a very long time.

If a natural law, formulated by science, is conditional in the way Aramike describes, that is saying. When ever the law doesn't apply to observations, changing conditions will explain this. (if not some other kind of error is found). Even history is called in to maintain this view, and the question is if there is, so far any example that contradicts this formulation.
This sounds, in itself, very much like a law like prediction based on observation and induction to me. Which means the discussion between Letum and Aramike haven't moved an inch, as Letum will maintain that you can't formulate laws based on empirical results and induction.
There is no way to logically exlude future cases where the law would not agree with the observations. That is a logical feature. What science have formulated as laws and how these have changed or not, is an historical and therefore empirical question, which will have to follow rules of language and logic as well. You can't really point to acctual history in order to strenghten or weaken a logical point.

Another way is the semantical part of it. It sounds as if conditional laws are made foolproof by a move in language. The law can't be wrong, as the conditions would have changed. I think Sir Karl Popper would have asked, is a scientific law and its theory backed up with this argument acctually possible to falsify? Any results that would show the law wrong, would be explained by changing conditions. But isn't this simply a way of trying to keep the concept of law as a kind of holy concept for science? The law was never wrong, beacuse now the conditions have changed. Or maybe the theory was wrong, but not the law, no not he law. Should conditions change back to the original, or we findt he correct theory, the law is still true. Of course, this is quite obvious, but is this a good stance in connection with the idea that science when formulating a natural law is based on empircal and fully testable (verification and falsification) work? It seems to me that the natural law risks to fall outside science this way.

However, it seems to me to be a good and proper way to do science as Aramike describes the situation. Of course one would look into the conditions, as they are what is supposed to explain and cause any law like observations. Anything else would be to give up scientific work as the idea of empirical research.
It might even be good reasons, pragmatically speaking for a concept of law in this "supra science" way. Scientist might work very well when using it.
It's like when Einstein maintained that some parts of what physics is, which he thought was given up in quantumm mechanis, was very important because those parts were the very thing that had made physics make progress. One of them was that it is possible to formulate fully objective and true laws of nature. Notice though, that Einstein, when discussing and arguing for the nature of scientific work, and natural law, didn't rely on how the concept of law works in science, but from a kind of outside position. This concept of natural law was the one that scientist had used during all the years, and it was crucial to keep it for future progress.
Taking one step back, this in turn makes it fulle possible that his argument can be proven wrong, even from a pragmatic point of view. Scientific progress might not at all have been that strongly connected to the idea of formulating objective laws of nature. Now, is the last sentence a point of logic or open to actual empirical research?

Ok, my thoughts of the day. I will now proceed to rock climbing again, where it holds very true, unfortunatly, that everthing that goes up, must come down....

cheers porphy