My take on the rationales given in the article.<p>#1: &quot;Only game in town&quot;: ZERO viability (perhaps negative).  Ether was the only game in town before relativity.  Geocentricism was the only game in town before it wasn&#x27;t.  Gods were the only game in town before science.<p>#2: &quot;Y grew out of X (and X is solid)&quot;: ZERO viability (perhaps negative).  It&#x27;s essentially a corollary of the exact same rationale.  (e.g. X = Maxwell&#x27;s Equations, and Y = Ether).  Everyone is thinking along the lines of X, and the only thing they can come up with is Y.<p>#3: &quot;Unexpectedly delivered explanations&quot;:  THIS is a big deal.  Or at least it may be.  This is what (I hate to say &quot;philosophers of science&quot;, depicting &quot;armchair philosophers&quot;, but rather &quot;scientists of science&quot;) need to be focusing on.  In essence, it asks: can mathematics (sometimes) be considered an experimental science, in the Popperian sense?  I think it could, if formalized, and would allow us to tackle on some of these nasty questions more definitively, but I have no idea what that formalization would be.  However I&#x27;d be very interested to see if etherian theory had any &quot;unexpectedly delivered explanations&quot; before Einstein.  THAT is worth investigating.