[thaumaturgy]

Nicely said.

For me, there are two caveats to this: 1) the mere possibility that a discipline of science might be wrong does not mean it is wrong, and unfortunately the possibility of wrongness is often used as an argument where it shouldn't be; 2) the various sciences tend to be wrong in a very specific way, and for some reason this often gets ignored in discussions like this.

The last time I can think of the popularly-accepted science of a discipline being "wrong" in exactly the opposite way from what later came to be accepted as "right" was the gradual shift from a terra-centric view of astronomy to a relativistic one. It turned out that not only was the Earth not the center of the universe, but the universe doesn't even have a center.

Since then, science -- and mathematics -- have been wrong in the sense that they are continually being revised, not reversed. Relativity represents a revision of Newton's laws, not a reversal, etc.

I think that there is less and less -- though not non-zero -- opportunity for any discipline of science to discover that its foundations are completely incorrect.

[jerf]

Reversals occur too. Tectonic plates, stress causes ulcers, neural networks are the one true future of AI, and those are just three off the top of my head. Rare for an entire science to be rewritten, sure, but trying to contain it by saying it's always just refinements betrays an unfamiliarity with scientific history too.