The Rubble of Progress
When Albert Einstein explained planetary motion, he didn't merely refine Sir Isaac Newton's work—he denied its fundamental elements like gravitational force and uniform flowing time.
This pattern repeats throughout scientific history: Johannes Kepler rejected the very existence of celestial spheres; Newton replaced Kepler's ellipses with a revolutionary approach using instantaneous velocity and acceleration. Each theory accurately predicted planetary movements while completely dismantling its predecessor's explanatory framework.
This has fueled the instrumentalist argument: if successive theories keep overturning their predecessors' basic explanations, how can we claim growth in our knowledge about reality? From Kepler to Newton to Einstein, we went from no force needed, to inverse-square-law force, back to no force needed. The predictive equations improved incrementally, but the explanations underwent radical transformation.
This raises a profound question: Was Newton's "force of gravity" ever truly an advance in human knowledge if Einstein later eliminated it entirely?