Michael Nielsen on scientific progress, falsification, and the road to special relativity
In this Dwarkesh Patel conversation, Michael Nielsen argues that the history of science is often much messier than the clean stories people tell afterward. Using Michelson-Morley, the ether, Lorentz transformations, and later muon experiments, the excerpt explores how scientific progress can emerge from competing theories, partial disconfirmation, and interpretive shifts rather than a simple, centralized method.