PTOLEMY, the ancient Greek astronomer, is renowned in scientific circles for thinking up a in which the sun and planets orbit the Earth. It had to be tweaked to fit every new astronomical observation, and the end result was an elaborate system of epicycles. When Copernicus showed that the observations fitted more elegantly with a theory in which the Earth went around the sun, Ptolemy’s work became redundant. Now when scientists call a system Ptolemaic, they mean it is clunky, over-elaborate and in need of a revolution.
One theory facing such an accusation is inflation, the idea that…
