How many scientific theories have been proven false since 1900?

How many of today's scientific ';truths'; will be proven false by 2100?





Why do people take these theories thought up by mere humans as fact?





Remember when the Atom was THE smallest particle? It was a FACT!!How many scientific theories have been proven false since 1900?
Ooh, I smell agenda. You are absolutely right - many theories once held as simple fact have since been proved wrong. You atom example is one. The nature of light is another. So are the various ideas about the origins of the universe.





On the other hand, that's the beauty of science - it is willing to correct itself when it finds itself in error. A big part of the problem is that we humans are *extremely* limited in our ability to understand the true nature of the universe. We see and understand %26gt;.%26lt; this much of something %26lt;.....................................%26gt; this big. As we slowly come across tiny bits of new information about a huge reality our ideas do change - and old ideas get thrown out. Some people will find this as a source of derision. Personally, I find it a fascinating process. I can't wait to see what comes next.How many scientific theories have been proven false since 1900?
Atoms are still the smallest particles, as far as chemistry is concerned. If you divide a piece of uranium, when you reach atom level, you still have atoms of uranium. Put them back together and you will have your original chunk. If you split the atoms, you force a nuclear reaction and end up with fission products, which are no longer uranium. Now we know why that happens, and we can tell exactly for what applications treating atoms as the smallest particles is correct and for which applications it is not correct.





Scientific theories are constantly improved to correct their definitions and boundary conditions in light of new data, but are almost never replaced in their entirety, because if something became a widely accepted theory, it must have described a lot of facts in a useful manner. Newtonian mechanics is still true, nobody uses relativistic corrections when dealing with conventional speeds, but now we know when we should use them.





It's actually quite hard to think of something within the last century that would have been rendered utterly useless by new data. phlogiston theory was gone in 1777, vitalism ended in 1828.. oh, here's a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsolete_sc鈥?/a> . Not a lot at all.





What do you mean by ';mere humans';, by the way? Machines haven't been very successful at abstract thinking yet.