ASTR 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Tropical Year, Correlation Does Not Imply Causation, Almagest
Document Summary
They wander, which is what the word planet means. Ptolemy"s model (but still not perfecty): however, the addition of orbit offsets and epicycles negated the simplicity of the basic heliocentric model. Scientific method: something needs to be explained, a hypothesis is made, does the hypothesis make a testable prediction. If so, design an experiment or observation to test the prediction. If not, it is not a scientific hypothesis. If the result is inconsistent with the prediction, the hypothesis is wrong. If the result is consistent with the prediction, the hypothesis is not necessarily right, but gains credibility. Design more experiments or observations to also test these predictions: the power of the scientific method is that it can eliminate bad ideas with a single test. It lends more and more credibility to ideas that pass more and more tests, but it can never prove any idea absolutely. In short, the scientific method is truth by elimination.
