Is it possible to build working models on false theories?

Technology we have in our day to day lives are built around tested and verified scientific theories.


Is it possible for technology that can exist on falsified theories.Is it possible to build working models on false theories?
Of course it is, but the reason we build prototypes is to test to see if the theories are true and if we employed them correctly.





For instance, the primatives built working planetary models based on the incorrect theory of spheres that nonetheless could predict eclipses.Is it possible to build working models on false theories?
If the model works then the theory is good.


The purpose of the theory is to allow us to make accurate predictions. If we have two completely different theories that give the same predictions, then we have a way (Occams razor) of deciding which to use, but we don't say either one is 'wrong.'


Think of theories in terms of 'more and less useful' instead of 'right and wrong.'


We can have a theory that gives accurate predictions for everything we can test, and then later find a new way of testing it that it now fails. The common way of talking about it would say that we've found the theory to be wrong but a more accurate way of looking at it is that we've found it to be less useful, or found a condition in which it's not useful. We found Newtonian mechanics to give false predictions at speeds close to the speed of light, but rather than saying it's wrong we just say it's not the tool to use for that situation. You need a different tool (relativity) to deal with those conditions.





In the example from the previous poster, the planetary spheres model is still useful if you want to predict eclipses. Not so much if you want to launch a space probe. We've dropped that one altogether because we have new theories that are just as easy to work with for eclipses and also work for space probes, but the point is the theory still works in the right context.