This isn't an elephant but it demonstrates the principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVuU2YCwHjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVuU2YCwHjw Epicycles we

This isn't an elephant but it demonstrates the principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVuU2YCwHjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVuU2YCwHjw Epicycles were originally considered a good idea because it takes exactly two circles to make an ellipse, and Kepler's laws were satisfied by such an ellipse. They were "falsified,", in the two-cycle form, when closer observations revealed that Kepler's laws were not obeyed exactly. At that point, the choice was to either add more epicycles (working your way up to an elephant), or for Newton to discover universal gravitation.