@359dd83b @461c3d9a @2a3c13d8 @6eb315a9 

I love these historical examples! And sorry if I'm being dense here, but in what way was Kepler pseudoscientific? He took Copernicus's idea and Brahe's data and formulated his 3 laws; those equations made predictions about where the planets would be in the future that could be tested (And as you said, those laws triggered some of Newton's ideas about why the planets move as they do).

Is the pseudoscience here the absence of an account of "why the planets do it that way?"

In contrast, IIT appears to be prescientific insofar as most of its predictions cannot be empirically tested at all (as I understand it). 

 @8599d6ab What I meant by "pseudoscientific" (including the scare quotes) is that the model/hypothesis Kepler initially conceived, and never in fact fully relinquished, was a completely false description of the solar system, based on an epiphany he had that the relative distances between the orbits were explained by a celestial arrangement of the five platonic solids. The sun was indeed at the centre of it though! 🙂 

 @359dd83b
Got it! And now that I do (again, sorry to be dense): can you spell out the lesson? My sense is that it’s something like: don’t be afraid to think outside the box; even if you’re wrong, => progress! 

 @8599d6ab Yes, there's definitely that aspect to it too! I was thinking of these two complementary lessons: 1) Science advances in improbable ways; we should be aware of this and so be as precise and limited as possible when it comes to judgment of scientific practice.

BUT: 2) Reality nevertheless remains the ultimate test zone, and no matter how elegant one's initial model/hypothesis may be, ultimately theory and not reality must bend. 

 @359dd83b 
Great points on both counts!