Categories: Alternative conceptions
An example of a historical scientific idea now considered an alternative conception,
"I was thinking of the earth's motion on its elliptical orbit round the sun, and I allowed 18 miles a second for its velocity. But its true velocity (I mean this time, not its absolute velocity, which has no sense, but its velocity in relation to the ether), this I do not know and have no means of knowing. It is, perhaps, 10 or 100 times as high…It is not a question, indeed, of the velocity in relation to absolute space, but of the velocity in relation to the ethics [sic, ether], which is regarded, by definition, as being in absolute repose."
Henri Poincaré (1914) Science and Method (trans. Francis Maitland) Dover Publications, 1952.
