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English Language & Usage

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    My understanding of your question is different from that in the six answers I have seen. You say you want it to apply to people in the past, who disbelieved things obvious to us now are not necessarily suffering from delusions or mental disorders of any kind. That being so, I cite the Austrian philosopher of the 1950s, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, to a colleague saying (one sunset) how obvious it was that they were seeing the rotation of the earth and not the sun sinking, responded: "But what would it look like, if it looked as if the sun were sinking?"
    – Tuffy
    Commented Apr 30, 2020 at 12:05
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    To clarify, are you looking for a term that describes the phenomenon of inventing new beliefs to explain away evidence which contradicts a strongly-held, established belief? That is, if I believe X, and am presented with evidence Y that contradicts X, I invent a new belief about Y that reinterprets it in some way such that it no longer contradicts X?
    – asgallant
    Commented Apr 30, 2020 at 18:55
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    Does this answer your question? A word for stretching out the facts just so they fit a theory?
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented May 1, 2020 at 18:29
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    Based on your edit, it sounds like part of what you're seeking is a phrase to characterize the consequences of an ongoing commitment to a false premise. One might consider these consequences a proliferation of errors. Taking that as a given, one might argue that the process that results in this proliferation of errors is the ongoing rationalization (@JulesCocovin) of the (evolving) circumstances around the matter in question -- whatever ongoing rationalization is necessary to preserve the belief that the false premise is true, unless and until one begins to see the light.
    – Richard Kayser
    Commented May 3, 2020 at 16:57
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    Something about "houses built on straw" might work but even that doesn't convey the sense of your continuing web… merely the first stage. Could the reason you don't a have nice pithy illustrative example be that broadly, there isn't one? Could that also be why your search engines had nothing useful to suggest?
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Commented May 3, 2020 at 19:56