turner%su-shasta@druid.UUCP (01/23/84)
The concept of parallax was well understood at the time Copernicus released his circumsolar theory, with the interesting result that empirical evidence could immediately be shown to disconfirm his theory! The stars were not then understood to be nearly as far away as they in fact are, so the parallax shift expected was greater than the actual -- and it was not observed. (The actual shift was too slight for instruments of the time to detect.) In spite of this fact, Copernicus' theory was quickly embraced by the bulk of the scientific community: it SIMPLY made too much sense. Ptolemy falls on Occam's razor. Examples of this trend in the history of physics abound in the work of Milic Capek, who has a lovely book whose title I'll scrounge up if anyone wants and can't find it for himself. Does this belong in the Physics list (wherever that is)? Well, SF folk might cast an eye over current science for possible cases of ill-measured data mischievously disconfirming delicious hypotheses. -- Jim Turner, DEC CPU/Systems Mfg @ ACO, CDN addr PARSEC::TURNER