[JFP in PA]

Originally Posted by The Radium King

sorry, didn't mean to insinuate that the number of planets is a law of physics or that Einstein was involved in the uncertain status of pluto. rather, my intent was to make the point that things are presented to us as certainties that are not necessarily so.

further, i'm not presumptive enough to say Einstein is wrong. newton's f=ma still works in most cases and is still taught in school (as an infallible law, that you don't discover isn't so until you get to university). Newtonian physics falls apart when certain things are asked of it, however. perhaps the appropriate things have yet to be asked of relativity or quantum mechanics - you don't know what you don't know.

as such, the pragmatic approach is to assume the law is fallible until proven otherwise. to thieve from Wikipedia:

"a proof must demonstrate that a statement is always true, rather than enumerate many confirmatory cases."

ie, just because no one has proven something wrong, don't make it necessarily so.

Unfortunately, I can not agree with Wikipedia's rather unusual position; in my world, the more challenges to a widely accepted concept that ultimately fall apart, only end up ultimately making the original concept that much stronger, as they end up demonstrating yet again that the unsuccessfully challenged concept is remains true...........