
Ask HN: What is the most brutal and thorough refutation you have ever seen? - liamcardenas
I am trying to find examples of ideas that seemed reasonable at the time, but were then dismantled by another thinker. Ideally, this refutation would go on to change or form the consensus on this issue among experts.<p>Please no Ben Shapiro videos :P
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tlb
Charles Darwin vs. the creation story in Genesis?

Copernicus vs. the Ptolemaic system of astronomy?

Most recent scientific paradigm shifts, like Einstein vs. Newtonian physics,
aren't really "brutal" since the previous system survives as a limiting case
for moderate energies.

Wegener's refutation of the theory that the continents were fixed wasn't
forceful enough. He proposed plate tectonics in 1915, but it wasn't widely
accepted until the 1960s.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#Development_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#Development_of_the_theory).

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carapace
Einstein.

I was reading him this morning and, although elegant and eloquent, he is
"brutal". (I'm thinking of Brutalist architecture more than raw violence.)

The velocity of light in a vacuum is fixed.

The laws of physics are the same from every (inertial framework) viewpoint.

Ergo, _from just those two ideas_ , everything we thought we knew as
fundamental truths about time and space was wrong and the real world is
stranger than anyone ever guessed.

Yah, it's _brutal_.

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yesenadam
Not exactly what you're after, but one from philosophy came to mind:
Santayana's book _Winds of Doctrine_ (1913), has a chapter brutally critiquing
Bertrand Russell's views in many areas, including his ethics, at the time
acquired from Moore. After reading it, Russell radically changed his ethical
views.

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idclip
Anything that criticized Marxism? Not sure that’s narrow enough.

The church thought the earth was the center of the galaxy and some dude proved
them wrong.

A lot of medical stuff.

I’m just shotgunning here Incase no one else gives an answer

