Jack comments on Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences) - Less Wrong
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Sigh. Oxygen has properties that have nothing to do with fire. You need it to properly model cellular respiration, water electrolysis, air currents, buoyancy, the properties of compounds of which the element is a part etc. Give me a coherent periodic table of elements that includes phlogiston instead of oxygen and we can talk.
Some theories are less wrong. So yes, you absolutely can throw a physical theory out the window if it is wrong. You might save the equations so you can make quick, approximate calculations (i.e. Newtonian mechanics) but that doesn't mean you include all the entities in the theory in your ontology.
This is essentially a truism for all outdated scientific theories.
Sure unless you want to make sense of combustion and anything that requires knowledge of modern chemistry or atomic theory at the same time!