In my previous post, I showed how the protagonist in Athene’s Prophecy could falsify Aristotle’s proof that the earth did not rotate, but he could not prove it did. He identified a method, but very wisely he decided that there was no point in trying it because there was too much scope for error. At this stage, all he could do was suggest that whether the earth rotated was an open question. If it did not, then the planets could not go around the sun, otherwise the day and the year would be the same length, and they did not. At this point it is necessary, while developing a theory, to assume that as long as it has no further part to play in the theory it does, if for no other reason than it is necessary. By doing so, it creates a test by which the new theory can be falsified.
The logic now is, either the earth moves or it does not. If it does move, it must move in a circle, because the sun’s size was constant. (Actually, it moves in an ellipse, but it is so close to a circle that this test would not distinguish it. If you knew the dynamics of elliptical motion, you could just about prove it did follow an ellipse. The reason is, it moves faster when closer to the sun, and the solstices and the equinoxes were known. A proper calendar shows the northern hemisphere summer side of the equinoxes is longer than the southern hemisphere’s one by about 2 – 3 days, and is the reason why February is the shortest month. We, in the southern hemisphere, get cheated by two days of summer. Sob! However, if you have not worked out Newton’s laws of motion, this is no help.) So, before we can prove the earth moves, we must first overturn Aristotle’s proofs that it did not, and that raises the question, where can a theory go wrong?
The most likely thing to go wrong in forming a scientific theory can be summarized simply: if you start with a wrong premise, you may draw a wrong conclusion. Your conclusion may agree with observation, because as Aristotle emphasized, a wrong premise can still agree with observation. One of Aristotle’s examples of false logic is as follows:
Man is a stone
A stone is an animal
Therefore, man is an animal.
The conclusion is absolutely correct, but the means of getting there is ridiculous. A major problem when developing a theory is that a wrong premise that brings considerable agreement with observation is extremely difficult to get rid of, and invariably it has pervasive effects for a long time thereafter.
One reason why, in classical times, it was felt that the Earth must be stationary was because of Aristotle’s premise that air rises. If so, the fact that we have air at all must be because the Universe is full of it. If so, then if the earth moves, it must move through air. If so, there would be a contrary wind, the speed difference of which on either side would depend on the rate of rotation. There was no such wind, therefore no such orbit. We can forgive Aristotle here, but we forgive those who followed Archimedes less well. Had Aristotle known of Archimedes Principle, this argument would probably never have been made. According to Archimedes, air rises to the top because it is the least dense, but it still falls towards the earth. Space is empty. There were clues in classical times that space was empty. One such clue was that when a star went behind the moon, it did so sharply, which indicated there was no air to refract it. It was also known there were no clouds on the moon.
This shows another characteristic that unfortunately still pervades science. Once someone establishes a concept, evidence that falsifies that concept tends to be swept under the carpet as long as by doing so, it does not affect anything else. No clouds on the moon might mean anything. So, perhaps, you will now begin to see how difficult it was to get the heliocentric theory accepted, and how difficult it is to find the truth in science when you do not know the answer. That applies just as much today as then. The intellectual ability of the ancients was as great as now, and Aristotle would have been one of the greatest intellects of all times. He just made some mistakes.
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