I would like a nice list of now-regarded-as-fictitious scientific/material concepts, but having google-fu trouble. Ether, phlogiston, elan vital, the 4 humors, vis viva... is there a name for these? Something like superseded science abstractions?
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Made me think of this: lesswrong.com/posts/6i3zToom
The idea of Kuhn-loss is interesting too, things that explained experimental results in the old paradigm that aren't explained by the new paradigm.
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I get the point, though that’s actually an unfair strawman of what elan vital was.
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Why go with historical fictions? Start with the current flat earthers, creationists, anti-vaxxers.....
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Homunculus theory was always my favourite - something magnificent about holding infinite recursive civilisations in your balls.
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Good question... something even more formal than "discredited" and "falsified"
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There is a term, but it's unfortunately not catchy: "purely objective" (that is, merely mind-dependent, as opposed to being also real).








