General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Either you believe in the scientific method or you don't [View all]gcomeau
(5,764 posts)I'm on my way to bed so I'll just knock off the first on your list for now. I will gladly return to the subject and work through the rest tomorrow if you still feel it's necessary after stopping to think through the items you posted.
What theories were overturned, disproved, or replaced by relativity?
None.
I'm sure the answer you were going for there was classical Newtonian physics, but you'd be dead wrong. Because classical Newtonian physics was when it was formulated, remained when Einstein was doing his work, and continues TO THIS DAY, to be a perfectly acceptably accurate model of the motion of almost any body in the universe that is of completely acceptable utility for most applications.
The fact that Relativity IMPROVED UPON (you read my first reply right?) that understanding to fill in some gaps in it that applied at, for instance, speeds approaching c... does not alter that. To this very day children in schools are being taught classical equations of physics and for very good reason.... because to this very day they remain accurate ENOUGH for most purposes. They. Are. Not. Wrong. They just have certain limitations that Einstein addressed.
Relativity is more accurate, because like most scientific advances it was an improvement upon... expansion of... .refinement of... existing scientific understandings of the universe. What it did not do was suddenly completely overturn all previous understandings of physics and show them to be wrong. Because, as I already tried to point out to you... that almost *never* happens with anything that science has enough corroborating data on to consider to be verified knowledge in the first place. It can happen once in a rare, rare, while... but that's it.