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outdated belief
subject			fact

outdated belief

is a kind of belief

Kinds of outdated belief :

• aether (3 facts) - In Aristotelian physics, the fifth element, of which the stars and planets are made., In Classical physics, an invisible medium that was thought to suffuse all space.
• alchemy (2 facts) - Art of bringing parts of the universe to the perfect state toward which they were thought to aspire - e.g., gold for metals, immortality for human beings.
• anthropic principle (3 facts) - The doctrine that the value of certain fundamental constants of nature can be explained by demonstrating that, were they otherwise, the universe could not support life and therefore would contain nobody capable of worrying about why they are as they are. Were the strong nuclear force slightly different in strength, for instance, the stars could not shine and life as we know it would be impossible., The weak form of the anthropic principle states that life can exist only during a brief period of the history of our universe. The strong form of the principle states that out of all possible values for the fundamental constants of nature and the initial conditions of the universe, only a small fraction could allow life to form at all, at anytime. (See boundary conditions; fundamental constants of nature.)
• anthropocentrism (2 facts) - The belief that humans are central to the universe.
• anthropomorphism (2 facts) - The projection of human attributes onto nonhuman entities such as animals, the planets, or the universe as a whole.
• Aristotelian physics (2 facts) - Physics as promulgated by Aristotle; includes the hypothesis that our world is comprised of four elements, and that the universe beyond the moon is made of a fifth element and so is fundamentally different from the mundane realm.
• astrology (3 facts) - The belief that human affairs and people's personalities and characters are influenced by (or encoded in) the positions of the planets., Divination using the positions of the planets, the Sun and the Moon as seen against the stars in the constellations of the zodiac - a "science" almost as old as homo sapiens. Although at one stage in history astrology and astronomy were almost synonymous- the latter has advanced so far during the last three centuries that the two now bear little relation to each other.
• Bohr atom (2 facts) - The model of an atom whose electrons are pictured as describing "Keplerian" orbits about the central nucleus.
• eccentrics (2 facts) - In Ptolemaic cosmology, displacement of the center of a rotating celestial sphere from the center of the universe.
• epicycle (4 facts) - Circular orbit of a body round a point that is itself in a circular orbit round a parent body. Such a system was formulated to explain some planetary orbits in the Solar System before they were known to be elliptical., In Ptolemaic cosmology a circular orbit around a point that itself orbits another point., A means of accounting for the apparent motions of the planets in terms of circular motions in a geocentric cosmology. Each planet moves in a circle, the center of which moves in a circle of larger radius, and so on, the largest circles being centered on the earth.
• geocentric cosmology (3 facts) - School of ancient theories that depicted the earth as standing, immobile, at the center of the universe., A model of the universe in which the earth is centrally located, and the Sun, planets, and stars revolve around the Earth.
• heliocentric cosmology (2 facts) - School of models in which the sun was portrayed as standing at the center of the universe.
• Kapteyn Universe (2 facts) - An incorrect model for the Galaxy proposed by Jacobus Kapteyn in which the Milky Way was small and the Sun located at or near the Galaxy's center.
• Mach's Principle (5 facts) - The precept that the inertia of objects results not from their relationship to Newtonian absolute space, but to the rest of the mass and energy distributed throughout the universe. Though unproved and perhaps unprovable, Mach's principle inspired einstein, who sought with partial success to incorporate it into the general theory of relativity., A pre-relativity statement to the effect that the local inertial frame is determined by some average of the motion of all the matter in the universe. In essence, mach's principle says that space, which is the arena in which matter interacts, is itself an aspect of that matter., The hypothesis that the inertia of bodies - that is, their resistance to acceleration by applied forces - is determined not by any absolute properties of space but by the effects of distant matter in the universe. equivalently, Mach's principle proposes that the distinction between accelerated and nonaccelerated frames of reference is determined by the effects of distant matter., The hypothesis that the local inertial frame and the inertia of any body is determined by the distribution of all the matter in the universe.
• nebular hypothesis (3 facts) - Hypothesis, maintained in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, that the spiral nebulae are not galaxies but are instead whirlpools of gas from which new systems of stars and planets are condensing. Compare island universe theory.
• scholastics (2 facts) - Adherents to the philosophy and cosmology of Aristotle. Their dominance in the universities, which had been founded largely to study Aristotle, constituted an obstacle to acceptance of the Copernican system advocated by Kepler and Galileo.
• spheres (2 facts) - Concept probably older than the ancient Greeks, in which the Sun, Moon, planets and the stars were thought to orbit the Earth travelling on their own crystalline but - except for that of the stars - transparent spheres.