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How Einstein shattered the myth of "settled science"

Unsettled science, many presumed, was risky, unreliable, insecure—in danger of one fateful day collapsing, sending hard-won practical progress built atop it crashing to the ground. In the face of skepticism, justificationists had a crowning example of grade-A, justified knowledge to point: Newton’s theory of gravity. Newton’s theory, which described gravity as a force that affected the motion of objects both terrestrial and celestial, had been corroborated by centuries’ worth of observations.