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Before the DNA molecule was observed or had any predictive or explanatory power, anyone could have said that there is no evidence for it if it was simply proposed. However, the notion of a molecule was observed and existed before DNA. Hence, the proposal wouldn’t be too radical.

Compare this to postulating the existence of a “living” being made of light such as an angel. Clearly, there is no evidence of this. But one might say there was no evidence of a DNA molecule before it was observed. But clearly, the angel postulation seems “more” evidence-less given the fact that we’ve never observed a “non physical” being in any way, shape, or form, much less if that concept is even coherent. What is the best way to differentiate theories that each seem to have no evidence?

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    I think that people searched for a mechanism to explain already known regularities in breeding, like Mendel's peas. DNA was found as the explanation for something observed, it wasn't proposed to advance a concept of heritability. We would have to be searching for in explanation for observed but unexplained regularities for Angels to be an answer to something. Perhaps there are such situations. – Scott Rowe Jul 07 '23 at 10:09
  • You seem to be selective on what you admit as evidence: just run a search on youtube for "see angels". On a more serious note, Rupert Sheldrake has made the case that a large number of fairly ordinary people report what is operationally ESP when they say "I just thought of you and you phoned... Strange!" And then choose to discount the event as coincidence. For dog telepathy he actually has controlled experiments – Rushi Jul 07 '23 at 11:45
  • A coincidence doesn’t imply telepathy. –  Jul 07 '23 at 11:50
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    @ScottRowe - good point. Mendel discovered generics mechanism. Only later the discovery of DNA showed how that "mechanism" is chemically implemented. So there is real progress in knowledge from Darwin to Mendel to Evolutionary biology: this is the way science proceed. Discussing in abstracto about "theories" is quite useless. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Jul 07 '23 at 12:45
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    See Thomas Kuhn and Scientific Revolutions: scientific theories are not only "sets of statements", scientific "competition" between theories is not only a comparison of theories vs facts and the "scoring" of theories is not based on simple algorithms: the scientific community is the ultimate owner of the opinion regarding theories. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Jul 07 '23 at 12:52
  • We should ask them. – Scott Rowe Jul 07 '23 at 15:57

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