A Theory Is Just A Mathematical Model

Astrologers Were Greatly Impressed, And Misled, By What They Believed To Be Confirming Evidence-so Much So That They Were Quite Unimpressed By Any Unfavorable Evidence. Moreover, By Making Their Interpretations And Prophecies Sufficiently Vague They Were Able To Explain Away Anything That Might Have Been A Refutation Of The Theory Had The Theory And The Prophecies Been More Precise. In Order To Escape Falsification They Destroyed The Testability Of Their Theory. It Is A Typical Soothsayer's Trick To Predict Things So Vaguely That The Predictions Can Hardly Fail: That They Become Irrefutable.

No Particular Theory May Ever Be Regarded As Absolutely Certain.... No Scientific Theory Is Sacrosanct.

It Is Not Intuitive Ease I Am After, But Rather A Point Of View Which Is Sufficiently Definite To Clear Up Some Difficulties, And To Be Criticized In Rational Terms. (bohr's Complementarity Cannot Be So Criticized, I Fear; It Can Only Be Accepted Or Denounced - Perhaps As Being Ad Hoc, Or As Being Irrational, Or As Being Hopelessly Vague.)

But Some Of These Theories Are So Bold That They Can Clash With Reality: They Are The Testable Theories Of Science. And When They Clash, Then We Know That There Is A Reality; Something That Can Inform Us That Our Ideas Are Mistaken.

For Myself, I Am Interested In Science And In Philosophy Only Because I Want To Learn Something About The Riddle Of The World In Which We Live, And The Riddle Of Man's Knowledge Of That World. And I Believe That Only A Revival Of Interest In These Riddles Can Save The Sciences And Philosophy From An Obscurantist Faith In The Expert's Special Skill And In His Personal Knowledge And Authority.