Philosophy of Space

Basically, there is this dude named Lord Kelvin who kept making errors in his way of thinking. But the people around him learned a lot from him, and his errors.
This man had such a huge ego, that he was never actually able to work with anyone else in finding out just how old the Earth was. But the entire time he was conducting research, people were using his errors to justify why what they were researching was correct and that Kelvin was in fact very very wrong.

For example, he asked good questions...he factored in some of the important elements that were needed in order to determine the age of the earth, and (sometimes) came up with the proof to prove what he was saying could potentially be correct. However, Kelvin never really came up with solid proof to prove that what he was claiming was in fact both true and accurate. For example, in one of his tests/studies to figure out the age of the Earth involved knowing the age of the Sun.

Mind you, he didn't actually know the age of the sun technically, but that was what he wanted to use in order to prove the true age of the Earth. Kelvin was trying to base his calculations off the heat that was given off by the sun. He felt that by using the amount of heat given off by the sun, it could help determine the heat from the Earth'ss interior. And that would help him figure out the age of the Earth's solid surface.

Those of you that know science, know that scientists use the layers in sedminet [rock] to help determine the age different parts of the Earth.
But, the answer he came up with for the age of the Earth's surface had to big of a range to even really help determine the age of the entire earth. He said it was between 100 and 400 million years old.

Not very helpful right?

And, he forgot to add in other factors such as radioactivity/radioactive decay-- which is what generates most of the Earth's heat anyways. So, with all of this there is no way that anything he actually came up with could be plausible enough to help determine the age of the earth.

I know that is a lot of words but hang with me for a bit longer, okay?

From Lord Kelvin's mistakes it was this that lead other famous philophers like Darwin to not only prove him even more wrong, but use his mistakes to his advantages. Darwin was able to use this knowlege to advance himself and ultimately it helped him come up with one of the most important theories, Theory of Evolution.