Good question. Why does it remind you of the aether and humors and not, say, the positron [1] and quarks? [2] Sometimes experiment leads theory, but sometimes

Good question. Why does it remind you of the aether and humors and not, say, the positron [1] and quarks? [2] Sometimes experiment leads theory, but sometimes theory leads experiment. It's only when theory proceeds untethered to any possible experimental confirmation or rejection that it gets in trouble. In this case, they're making actual predictions that should be testable in the near future. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark