On 12/15/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
When Newton originally presented his theory of gravity it was seriously attacked by his contemporaries as being comprised of "occult forces" rather than being a truly mechanistic physics (like Cartesian physics). Now we all know how that worked out in the end -- not only did Newton triumph, but even what science was ended up being redefined in the process. And it has been redefined many times since then, in different ways and different fields -- each time something initially incompatible becomes the accepted norm, it changes not only the evidence, but the entire standard of what counts as evidence and even what counts as argumentation. This is a well-documented phenomena, and even the most positivistic of philosophers acknowledge this
(phenomenon)
to some degree.
What's your point? The goal of Wikipedia is not to predict the future but to accurately reflect the present.