To the majority of people, every issue has 2 sides. One is right, and the other is wrong. The impression is that, if something is wrong about an argument, a position, a theory, then the entire thing is wrong. This is Aristotelian or Boolean reasoning. Famous smart people use this binary right/wrong or true/false principle to do great things. But…
Once upon a time, the world was flat. We now know (as of at least 2000 years ago) that this is wrong.
Once upon a time, people thought the world was a sphere. In the 19th century, it was measured that this was wrong.
Are these ideas both equally wrong, or is one more wrong than the other? In science, one recognizes degrees of error, magnitudes of mismeasurement. The flat Earth is off by a dimension, whereas the spherical Earth is off by a few percent. (It is fatter around the equator from spin, stretched further by lunar tide, and oddly flattened near the South Pole (possibly related to the events that caused the moon to splash off, and/or the continents to rise)).
Some ideas can be wronger than others.
When Creationists gleefully point out that (popular evolutionist) was in error about (detail of the theory at the time), they use this to claim that the entire structure of the theory is wrong. Never mind that this detail was usually found to be wrong by discovering its replacement in supporting the original theory.
When Punctuated Equilibrium [1] replaced Darwinian gradualism late in the 20th century, before any of the 3 now-known causes of sudden global extinctions were discovered, no one in any field of science said that, because Darwin was wrong about this point all of his theory is wrong.
This binary thinking may work for an bipartisan election, but it is not scientific. Scientific theories all evolve from a global idea to explain the rough observations, to a suite of thousands of provable interrelated sub-theories that all hold together and prove ever-more-precise pieces of the puzzle. Proving a sub-theory wrong does as much damage to the main theory as pulling one fiber from a felt overcoat does to its coatness.
F’rinstance: One can be wrong about the exact order of precedence in (for example) proto-horse fossils without affecting the obvious fact that small 3-toed horses did exist, and no longer do. Whether the fossils with the 2 vestigial toes predated the 3-toed variety (even though they are always found in a younger stratum), or fit into the obvious place between the modern 1-toed horse and the older 3 toed variety does not affect the theory that the horse has changed over time, and as its environment changed.
Someday I might address fuzzy logic [2] here. This is a precise and useful tool for everyday life, and a modern alternative to binary yes vs. no thinking.
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