False but useful scientific theory

One can still construct a theory that works and makes good predictions where the earth is the center and the sun goes around it. Of course that theory doesn't work if one introduces gravitational effects, but if one just sticks to mathematical description and is willing to get complicated enough, it can be done.

The problem I would have with that would not so much be its complications, but its ignoring knowledge for other areas. It has to limit itself to just one realm of data. Still, it could predict eclipses and locations and so on.

Classical physics has to try to ignore Michelson-Morley and Lagrange transformations, etc., for macroscopic phenomena and ignore radiation and tunneling effects, etg., for microscopic radiation (I dislike "microscopic" -- the usual word -- it should be "sub-microscopic" or atomic or something like that). Still classical physics is closer to the intuitive way we see things, and so seems to be where everyone begins any education on either relativity or quantum matters. It seems weird that we must begin to teach what is right by first teaching what is not.

At any rate this is fun. Exploring the nature of knowledge is something we can all do, or at least think we can do.