good science?

[Martin Hewlett]

edregis at aol.com (EdRegis) wrote:
>>Two of the examples you quote are quite interesting.  Before 
>>the Copernican revolution, the Ptolemeic view (geocentric) 
>>of the cosmos was viewed as "emprical reality."  
>
>Correct, but that doesn't mean it *was* empirical reality.  And as a
>matter of fact, it wasn't.  
>
>>In fact, there was nothing wrong with
>>that model in that it explained the available data.
>
>Wrong.  It did not explain parallax.


Not to belabor the point, Ed, but just a small correction.  The 
Ptolemeic model did not fail to explain parallax.  In fact, parallax is 
a *prediction* of the Copernican model.  Parallax was not observed 
(i.e., observation made) until the 19th century, when instrumentation 
had improved sufficiently.

My point was that so-called empirical reality for a scientist before 
Copernicus did not include facts which only became known much later.  
However, that same scientist would have argued strenuously that the 
current model represented "reality."

Martin Hewlett
Dept. of Molecular and Cellular Biology
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona