[Piers]

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Scientific progress has followed the cycle of consistently obsolescing previous scientific beliefs with new ones.

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Do you guys constantly ignore the real world or what?

Yes, older theories are replaced by new ones. But the new ones almost *never* throw away the old ones. They are simply subsumed into the new theories. Look at Newtonian physics vs. Relativity. It's an improvement, not a total replacement.

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Yes of course.

Obsolete was a bit of a strong word to use, I was overstating to emphasise a point. Newtonian mechanics is still widely used so is not obsolete from a practical viewpoint.

However from the viewpoint of getting as accurate as possible theoretical models of the universe it can be valid to describe Newtonian mechanics as obsolete as Relativity is less inaccurate and can be considered to dominate Newtonian mechanics in this regard.

I think it is possible for something to be obsoleted by an improvement rather than only a replacement. But I guess this is a matter of definition.

All this is a trivial quibble, and does not have any bearing on the point I was making in my original post.