| It's a bad explanation because the sun (probably) IS powered by nuclear fusion. Deutsch is confused by this situation because he doesn't have the scientific background to understand the usefulness of negations of hypotheses. Historically, for example, a lot of people believed the sun revolved around the earth. If we treat this as T, then ~T is "the sun does not revolve around the earth". ~T certainly lacks details, but to say it's a "bad explanation" is rather silly. Obviously it's an incomplete explanation, which is why Galileo presented a full explanation ("the earth revolves around the sun") rather than just saying, "the sun does not revolve around the earth". But in fact, "the sun does not revolve around the earth" was the part that was controversial because it was the bad explanation being presented by the church (who happened to be closer to philosophers than scientists). Basically, Deutsch is just making a straw man argument. In Deutsch's mind, the fact that "the sun does not revolve around the earth" is an incomplete theory of heliocentrism is somehow a refutation of all science, when in fact that's simply not the sort of hypothesis scientists even explore typically. |