October 2015 LSAT Section 1 Question 25

In passage B's description of the developments leading to the rejection of Newton's theory of gravity, which one of t...

@MichaelaJ on October 8, 2023

Please explain

Hi- Still don't understand why C is incorrect. Neptune disproved the astronomer's original theory of there being no planets in the vicinity of Uranus, and that theory was proven incorrect when they discovered Neptune. Wouldn't this make Neptune the black swan in passage A?

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Emil-Kunkin on October 10, 2023

The sequence of events for the outer planets is actually a little different from what you described.

First, U was discovered, but scientists realized that their initial assumptions did not match the observed orbit, so they made new assumptions, and those assumptions were found to be correct. In this case, the negative evidence or black swan was the fact that the orbit did not match the expected orbit. A black swan should be something that disproves a theory. This was not what Uranus did, rather, it showed that an initial assumption was incorrect.

We do however have a true black swan that served to disprove a theory. The details of mercurys orbit ran counter to newtons theory of gravity, and helped to eventually disconfirm that theory and confirm the relativity theory of gravity.