Originally Posted by hhEb09'1

Ken G differentiates between dead weight and falsified but still useful theories, and I think that points to an oversimplification of the description of the process.

For instance, in the example of Mercury, the anomaly was around for a long time before Einstein attacked it with general relativity, true, but even after he did (and he used it as a touchstone many times in his development of general relativity to judge his progress), researchers were still pursuing more classical explanations of it well into the sixties and beyond. The oblateness of the sun just wasn't that well-known at the time--and certainly not before the turn of the (19/20) century.

Anyway, does it falsify all of Newtonian mechanics, or just that particular aspect? Even after Einstein published it, there were doubts. Testing of general relativity vice Newton didn't really get going until the sixties. I think, saying the precession falsifies newtonian mechanics is an overly broad interpretation.

PS: Smiley-free posting for the last **006** posts