[kradem]

>> could something be dismissed if we don't fully understand it? > No, as the entire concept of "fully understand" is ridiculous. We can't fully understand anything, so if you assume the answer is yes then we could dismiss everything.

It's not a concept, it's just my lousy English and awkward abbreviation of "to the point where" with "fully".

I'm here just to play a game of logic.

Did we dismiss the ether at the point when we managed to understand it better/enough or we managed to dismiss it after we started to play with other cards?

[boomboomsubban]

It's not your English, I understand what you are saying, you're game of logic is using an old copy of the rules.

Science doesn't dismiss things. Theories about ether were put aside when we started getting experimental results that it could not support and developed other models that explained it better. The theory still exists, and there is a possibility that someone will use it to better explain things in the future.

Your logic boils down to "if we understand something, it can not be dismissed. If we do not understand something, it can be dismissed..." This doesn't work in science though, the first assumption can not be true, so the second ends up saying you can dismiss everything. Leibniz and other's noticed and addressed this flaw in logic in the 1700's, and expanded logic to deal with it.

I am not great at this logic either, but a laymen's version goes "if `theory` supports experimental evidence better than anything else, you should act as if it were true until a better theory is available."

[kradem]

Thank you very much for your effort here in explaining things.

There's nothing here in the thread powered by "my logic". I'm just certain that dark matter, ether, the Holy Grail, or anything, could be abandoned in our minds once we find the prettier chick to cope with, no matter how well we understood the previous one.

[boomboomsubban]

Yes, we could abandon it. The point of science is that we never should.

Before the scientific method was adopted, we would take that pretty woman, ignore any flaws, and make them essentially god. A new one had almost no chance to compete, even of they were much prettier.

With the scientific method, we say that she's the best around, but there's probably a better one out there, and with a little work it might be the old one. So it's easier to adopt new ideas, and the old ones still provide some value.

[kradem]

Yep, the best around trying to stand the test of time.