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To: edsheppa
Aristarchus seems to have proposed a heliocentric theory about 270BC. Aristotle had already rejected the earlier Pythagorean heliocentric theory.

Quantum Mechanics was accepted almost instantly (during 1926 or so). Einstein only thought QM incomplete, not wrong. QM was accepted because it explained so many things; the periodic table, radioactive decay, electron diffraction, heat capacities, the photoelectric effect, superfluidity, etc. Physics went from Laplacian-deterministic to Heisenbergian-random in less than a year.

2,320 posted on 06/02/2005 9:48:50 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: Doctor Stochastic
Wow. So much for new and surprising. Did Copernicus just rip Aristarchus off? Or did he dust off an old theory in the light of new information? The explanation of the seasons was Copernicus' though, right?

Yes he considered it incomplete but I think it is fair to say, as I did, that Einstein never reconciled himself to the reality of QM. He didn't want to give up determinism and locality - philosophically he could not completely accept a theory that didn't have them.

2,322 posted on 06/02/2005 10:03:43 PM PDT by edsheppa
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