[daxfohl]

My take on the rationales given in the article.

#1: "Only game in town": ZERO viability (perhaps negative). Ether was the only game in town before relativity. Geocentricism was the only game in town before it wasn't. Gods were the only game in town before science.

#2: "Y grew out of X (and X is solid)": ZERO viability (perhaps negative). It's essentially a corollary of the exact same rationale. (e.g. X = Maxwell's Equations, and Y = Ether). Everyone is thinking along the lines of X, and the only thing they can come up with is Y.

#3: "Unexpectedly delivered explanations": THIS is a big deal. Or at least it may be. This is what (I hate to say "philosophers of science", depicting "armchair philosophers", but rather "scientists of science") need to be focusing on. In essence, it asks: can mathematics (sometimes) be considered an experimental science, in the Popperian sense? I think it could, if formalized, and would allow us to tackle on some of these nasty questions more definitively, but I have no idea what that formalization would be. However I'd be very interested to see if etherian theory had any "unexpectedly delivered explanations" before Einstein. THAT is worth investigating.