NoName
Posts: 2729
Joined: Mar. 2013
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| Quote (N.Wells @ Sep. 22 2014,20:12) | ...
I differ a bit from what NoName said here. He's absolutely right that every successful new theory must eventually explain everything explained by the previous theory and more, but it's not always the case that new theories incorporate old theories in doing so. The classic incorporation is Newtonian physics continuing to work just fine within Einsteinian relativity, just as long as you and/or the stuff that you are considering are not moving at velocities or energies near the speed of light. In other cases, however, a theory can completely be displaced by a newer and better theory. Phlogiston theory didn't get subsumed into better chemistry, but got tossed onto the dunghill of bad ideas. Plate tectonics is intermediate: the concept of "stable continents" went to the dunghill, but geosynclines and eugeosynclines and orogenic belts were incorporated into a fuller description and better explanations.
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I'm not sure we're in disagreement.
Absolutely every single fact that phlogiston or stable continent theory purported to explain remains a fact accommodated within the replacement theories. Every single correct logical implication is contained within subsequent theories. The things we know continue to constrain the sorts of errors possible to new theories.
Both phlogiston theory and stable continent theory were falsified -- each had logical implications that contradicted 'facts on the ground', each encountered evidence that they not only failed to accommodate but literally could not accommodate due to their logical structure and the inferences that followed therefrom.
In an rather overblown sense, Gary's "theory" has suffered the same fate. It has logical consequences inherent to its claims and structure that are known to be false. It encounters facts in the world it cannot accommodate.
It is perhaps incorrect to speak of something which doesn't even rise to the level of hypothesis as being falsified, but insofar as Gary's effluent has the occasional floating blob of sense rising out of the word vomit, it has been shown to be false, illogical, incoherent, and incapable of doing the job(s) claimed for it.
Gary's belief that his "theory" makes sense perhaps deserves its own page in the DSM.
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