Wrong for the Right Reasons

The rapidity with which knowledge changes makes much of past science obsolete, and often just wrong, from the present's point of view. We no longer think, for example, that heat is a material substance transferred from hot to cold bodies. But is wrong science always or even usually bad science? The essays in this volume argue by example that much of the past's rejected science, wrong in retrospect though it may be - and sometimes markedly so - was nevertheless sound and exemplary of enduring standards that transcend the particularities of culture and locale.

Contenu

Introduction: Beyond Disunity and Historicism.- "In Order That We Should Not Ourselves Appear to Be Adjusting Our Estimates ... to Make Them Fit Some Predetermined Amount".- Ptolemy's Theories of the Latitude of the Planets in the Almagest, Handy Tables, and Planetary Hypotheses.- Alchemy and the Changing Significance of Analysis.- Descartes and the Heart Beat: A Conservative Innovation.- Skating on the Edge: Newton's Investigation of Chromatic Dispersion and Achromatic Prisms and Lenses.- Was Wrong Newton Bad Newton?.- Visual Photometry in the Early 19th Century: A "Good" Science with "Wrong" Measurements.- An Error within a Mistake?.- The Konopinski-Uhlenbeck Theory of ? Decay: Its Proposal and Refutation.