I concur, there's nothing wrong with gradual progress of course. On the other hand, about your second point, there are a number of such models. The geocentric v

I concur, there's nothing wrong with gradual progress of course. On the other hand, about your second point, there are a number of such models. The geocentric view of the universe got deprecated with Galilei's discovery of the Jupiter's moons. More recently, I could mention the Bohr model (electrons traveling in circular orbit around the nucleus). It was widely considered as correct at the time and it was in accordance with experimental observations. However, the Bohr model wasn't improved (although many scientists tried to save it with extensions of some kind or other), it was completely dropped as it is simply wrong. It can be disproven by a number of different experiments. Wikipedia actually has a great collection of superseded scientific theories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories