On Friday, November 2, 2018 at 9:56:11 AM UTC, Paul Schlyter wrote:


That's not a requirement, it's enough that the new experiments have at
least the same confidence as the old. Most likely, the new experiments
will measure a domain which wasn't measured in the old experiments, e.g.
because the older technology was unable to do such measurements. The
canonical example is Newtonian mechanics vs the theory of relativity. And
the new theory should explain not just the results from the new
experiments, but from the old experiments as well. THe theory of
relativity didn't show that Newtonian mechanics was completely invalid,
but merely that it wasn't applicable at speeds approaching the speed of
light.


The guys one hundred years ago had a ball with Sir Isaac and his absolute/relative time,space and motion without actually understanding what he was try to do with his 'scientific method' agenda.

It certainly hinges on Huygen's expression of a geocentric/heliocentric equivalency via the Equation of Time so it must take quite a blinkered conviction to ignore it -

"Absolute time, in astronomy, is distinguished from relative, by the equation of time. For the natural days are truly unequal, though they are commonly considered as equal and used for a measure of time; astronomers correct this inequality for their more accurate deducing of the celestial motions...The necessity of which equation, for determining the times of a phænomenon, is evinced as well from the experiments of the pendulum clock, as by eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter." Principia

The botched attempt to bypass the noon anchor for rotation and the averaging process leading to accurate clocks and the 24 hour system only highlights how lost Newton's followers were and are. They have opted for RA/Dec for a geocentric/heliocentric equivalency hence the awful mouthful known as 'the inverse square law' or the central pillar of empiricism where it was meant to intersect with astronomy -

"That the fixed stars being at rest, the periodic times of the five primary planets, and (whether of the sun about the earth, or) of the earth about the sun, are in the sesquiplicate proportion of their mean distances from the sun.... for the periodic times are the same, and the dimensions of the orbits are the same, whether the sun revolves about the earth, or the earth about the sun." Newton

Relativity is a bull in a china shop but then again so is Isaac's meaningless attempt to fit astronomy in experimental sciences.Whatever story you tell yourselves to make yourselves feel better, it is more productive to actually know what happened and when.