« WeatherBill: Someone's Finally Doing Something About the Weather | Main | Troubles at Time »

Latest Stories

• Excel Wankers and Recession Averages
• Sorry, New York is Closed. Check Back Later.
• Catching Falling 2009 Earnings Estimate Knife
• Survivorship Bias in Global Markets
• Talking Positions on a Lazy-ish Retirement Portfolio

January 15, 2007

Copernicus vs. Ptolemy: Why Innovations Sometimes Look Dumb

Van Jacobson tells a wonder anecdote about innovation and its critics one-third of the way into a talk of his from last summer:

When Copernicus first wrote his paper on planetary motion the predictions that he gave were really crummy compared to the Ptolemaic predictions. The earth-centered-universe astronomers had had three centuries to work out the math of that, and they had gotten really really good at it. And then this new system comes along, and it sorta tells you where stuff is, but don't set your compass by it.

Lovely stuff, and true in far more domains than planetary science. While it reminds me of my long-ago grad-school courses on stop-start paradigm changes and the philosophy of science, it is also reminiscent of many board-room discussions where people feverishly defend discredited but still "working" approaches.

Sphere It   |   Digg it   |   Bookmark it   |   Stumble it   |   Facebook it