We have all had the experience of having what seemed like a great idea, only to find that it wouldn't do, because it was contradicted by a familiar fact or suffered from an incurable logical error. The experience prompts the question: what was the cleverest idea in the history of science that turned out to be wrong? Before you try to answer this question, let me insist that by 'wrong' I mean really wrong. I won't accept 'Newton's laws of motion' as an answer. I understand that physicists nowadays insist that his laws break down at very high velocities and accelerations. As an ex-engineer whose aeroplanes never flew faster than sound, let alone light, I have great faith in Newton's laws: they are not so much 'wrong' as true subject to certain constraints. For the same reason, I would not accept 'Mendel's laws' as an answer either, even though the law of independent assortment is false for genes on the same chromosome. I want an idea that is wrong in all circumstances, but which deserves to be right.
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