Epicycle

The epicycle made it possible for the Greeks to explain the planetary movements.

Like most astronomers before him, Ptolemy believed the Sun, Moon, and other planets circled the Earth. He thought that each space body moved in a small circle (an epicycle) that was itself orbiting Earth.

As presented to the earth the track of a planet is an elaborate epicycle; but Copernicus bade us transfer ourselves to the sun and look again.

Is it not [Philosophie], that […] teacheth miserie, famine and sicknesse to laugh? Not by reason of some imaginarie Epicicles, but by naturall and palpable reasons.

If two chronicles seemed contradictory, instead of trying to choose between them, a rationalization (epicycle) was devised to cover both.

Rather than solve the theoretical problem of how to produce a method of political ethics, the contractarian device introduces an unnecessary theoretical epicycle into what is otherwise a coherent account of social justice in particular and political morality in general.