Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast.
Speaker 1: My name is Joe McCormick. This episode is publishing on
Speaker 1: a Tuesday, which means we would normally have an all
Speaker 1: new core episode of the show for you, but my
Speaker 1: regular co host Robert Lamb is a little bit under
Speaker 1: the weather this week, so instead we are bringing you
Speaker 1: an episode from the vault while Rob recovers. So he
Speaker 1: should be back on Mike soon and we should be
Speaker 1: able to continue the series that we were in the
Speaker 1: middle of before this week, So that was a series
Speaker 1: on childhood amnesia. More on that in the future, but
Speaker 1: for now, we hope you enjoyed this vault episode called
Speaker 1: The Stargazer and the Well, which originally published May fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In
Speaker 1: today's episode, we're going to discuss a very old association
Speaker 1: between astronomy and wells, and this ties into various ancient
Speaker 1: anecdotes and also archaeological sites. Basically getting it down to
Speaker 1: this idea that if you have a well if you
Speaker 1: have a deep pit or even a long tube, that
Speaker 1: this could allow an individual to see starlight during the day.
Speaker 1: Had you ever heard of this, Joe, No, I don't
Speaker 1: think not before you brought this up. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: and this is one that there was more to it
Speaker 1: the more I kept looking into it, but instantly it's
Speaker 1: kind of a captivating idea of you know nothing about
Speaker 1: it because there's something about the two extremes in play here,
Speaker 1: the bottom of an earthly pit and the light of
Speaker 1: distant stars. You know, it reminds me of that that
Speaker 1: that far more recent quote by author Oscar Wilde in
Speaker 1: his play A Lady Windermere's Fan, which, even if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with that source, you may have heard this,
Speaker 1: this particular quote quote, we are all in the gutter,
Speaker 1: but some of us are looking at the stars. Well
Speaker 1: that's a great sentiment. Yeah, I guess I take it
Speaker 1: to mean that maybe one's character is defined not by
Speaker 1: the not by where your body is, but by where
Speaker 1: your thoughts are aimed. Yeah. Now, one guess starting place
Speaker 1: for this is that a lot of the especially more
Speaker 1: recent writings you see and illusions referring to this, well,
Speaker 1: astronomy situation will frequently point out that, okay, well you
Speaker 1: had you had Aristotle mentioning and passing, and of course
Speaker 1: plenty of the elder mentions it. So let's start with
Speaker 1: the Aristotle quote. He does mention it kind of has
Speaker 1: an aside, and it is in chapter five of the
Speaker 1: fourth century BC text Generation of Animals. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: is going to be setting up the relationship between looking
Speaker 1: out of a well or a tube and seeing the
Speaker 1: stars in the daytime. Right, So this is what Aristotle says. Quote.
Speaker 1: The cause of some animals being keen sided and others
Speaker 1: not so is not simple but double. For the word
Speaker 1: keene has pretty much a double sense, and this is
Speaker 1: the case in like manner with hearing and smelling. In
Speaker 1: one sense, keen site means the power of seeing at
Speaker 1: a distance. In another, it means the power of distinguishing
Speaker 1: as accurately as possible the objects seen. These two faculties
Speaker 1: are not necessarily combined in the same individual. For the
Speaker 1: same person, if he shades his eyes with his hand
Speaker 1: or look through a tube, does not distinguish the differences
Speaker 1: of color either more or less in any way, but
Speaker 1: he will see further. In fact, men in pits or
Speaker 1: wells sometimes see the stars. But one of the curious
Speaker 1: things here though, and this is ultimately the like the
Speaker 1: hard fact that we will keep coming back to and
Speaker 1: thinking about this, is that during the day we cannot
Speaker 1: see the stars, right, you know, not with the naked eye.
Speaker 1: And I think i've read that like the brightest star
Speaker 1: not counting the sun. Of course, the brightest star in
Speaker 1: the night sky would have to be something like five
Speaker 1: times as bright for the human eye to see it
Speaker 1: during the day. So this is one of those things
Speaker 1: that's right from the get go here, it's not going
Speaker 1: to match up with any experience out there. Though, if
Speaker 1: you have had the experience of standing in a pit
Speaker 1: and looking up and seeing the night sky during the daytime,
Speaker 1: certainly right in and tell us more about this. But
Speaker 1: but for the most part, yeah, it goes against everything
Speaker 1: we expect to be true from our modern perspective. And
Speaker 1: yet we see multiple references to this being a reality.
Speaker 1: And granted a lot of these are secondhand in the
Speaker 1: nature of a lot of these ancient texts. For instance,
Speaker 1: plenty of the elder who's kind of a champ end
Speaker 1: of the second or third hand account of the natural world,
Speaker 1: he chimes in on this a little bit in natural history. Quote,
Speaker 1: the sun's radiance makes the fixed stars invisible in daytime,
Speaker 1: although they are shining as much as in the night,
Speaker 1: which becomes manifest at a solar or eclipse, and also
Speaker 1: when the star is reflected in a very deep Well. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: he's doing really good up until that very last part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's something you said. I mean, because first
Speaker 1: of all, a lot of this, a lot of the
Speaker 1: times we're talking not talking about, like, you know, just
Speaker 1: pure folklore here, we're talking about very learned individuals of
Speaker 1: their age, individuals who who you know, often knew something
Speaker 1: or a lot concerning astronomy during their time, and they're
Speaker 1: chiming in on this as if it is true or
Speaker 1: said to be true. Well, I mean, he is absolutely
Speaker 1: correct that the stars are still shining during the daytime
Speaker 1: just like they are at night. It's the problem is
Speaker 1: simply that their light is drowned out by the glare
Speaker 1: of the sun. So it's not as if, I mean,
Speaker 1: you might assume, if you were just going by intuition,
Speaker 1: that the stars turn off their lights during the day
Speaker 1: or something, you know, that they somehow disappear no, that
Speaker 1: they're still there. They're always there, we just can't see
Speaker 1: them because there's too much light from this other light source. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so almost everything oh yeah about that statement is corrected.
Speaker 1: But at the end he loves it. Now. One of
Speaker 1: the sources I was looking at for this is a
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three paper by Eiden Psi Aali and this
Speaker 1: was republished in two thousand and seven by the Foundation
Speaker 1: for Science, Technology and Civilization. So Psi Aali major Turkish
Speaker 1: science historian. So important that he's actually on a bank note.
Speaker 1: You can if you look him up on like Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: you can see see his face on currency. Wow. But
Speaker 1: this is a very nice little overview of this concept
Speaker 1: and touches on, you know, the fact that it not
Speaker 1: only pops up in the history of astronomy, but it
Speaker 1: also pops up in folklore and literature of vary as
Speaker 1: different cultures. And the idea is basically what we've been discussing,
Speaker 1: that one may stand at the bottom of a well
Speaker 1: or something similar, like a great pit or some sort
Speaker 1: of natural formation of caves, and if you look up
Speaker 1: you can glimpse the stars during the day. And Psiali
Speaker 1: writes that sometimes this is just a vague tidbit without
Speaker 1: any specifics, like it's just alluded to, Oh, one can
Speaker 1: do this, and this has been done. But other times
Speaker 1: it's connected to specific individuals and times. So the author
Speaker 1: mentions several more examples here, and I'm going to touch
Speaker 1: on them here. So first of all, it points out
Speaker 1: that Greek astronomer Cleomides says that the sun appears larger
Speaker 1: when seen from the bottom of a deep cistern because
Speaker 1: of the darkness and the moisture of the air, though
Speaker 1: it does not make mention of actual what we'll discuss
Speaker 1: in a bit, actual observation wells some sort of a
Speaker 1: well or deep shaft in the earth that is used,
Speaker 1: that is either built or repurposed or used for looking
Speaker 1: at the stars. Another individual he points to is the
Speaker 1: writings of Islamic philosopher Abu Barrakat al Baghdatti, who lived
Speaker 1: ten eighty through eleven sixty four or eleven sixty five CE,
Speaker 1: And this individual actually wrote a text titled on the
Speaker 1: reason why the stars are visible at night and hidden
Speaker 1: in daytime, and in this he contends that it comes
Speaker 1: down to illumination of part of the atmosphere immediately above
Speaker 1: the observer, and he does not mention observation wells specifically either,
Speaker 1: And then you have Leonardo da Vinci also contending that
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is dense and full of moisture particles that
Speaker 1: during the daylight reflect radiance to obscure the stars. So
Speaker 1: again there's another example. Davinci's not talking about observation wells.
Speaker 1: But Psyali contends that all three of these lines of
Speaker 1: thinking quote would seem to be in agreement with, or
Speaker 1: even inspired by, the claim that from the bottom of
Speaker 1: a well or in a tall tower, which is to say,
Speaker 1: at the bottom of a tall tower, which would prevent
Speaker 1: the illumination of a portion of the atmosphere immediately above
Speaker 1: the observer, star has become visible in daytime. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I think I'm catching onto the intuitive current that's driving this.
Speaker 1: Might it be something like this. I can see the
Speaker 1: stars in the nighttime when things are dark. Therefore, darkness
Speaker 1: is what allows me to see the stars. So if
Speaker 1: I get down at the bottom of a well or
Speaker 1: the bottom of a tower, where I can look out
Speaker 1: through the top, the dark environment that I have enclosed
Speaker 1: myself in will somehow like create the conditions of night
Speaker 1: where I can normally see the stars. Is it something
Speaker 1: like that? It seems to be again, this is something
Speaker 1: where it again this is this is not true, This
Speaker 1: is not seemed to be exactly what happens when one
Speaker 1: is standing in a pit looking up, standing in a
Speaker 1: well et ce. So we can't we you know, we
Speaker 1: can't break down the exact process of this because this
Speaker 1: is not a reality. But yeah, this seems to be
Speaker 1: what the basic argument seems to be like if you
Speaker 1: can as closely as possible approximate nighttime during the day
Speaker 1: for your local self and then look up at the sky,
Speaker 1: maybe then you would see the stars. Except that doesn't
Speaker 1: actually happen, right, But again, important knowledgeable individuals who are
Speaker 1: writing about this and repeating its signal boosting it. If
Speaker 1: you will, you have you know, ultimately have the likes
Speaker 1: of say Roger Bacon mentioning it. Seemed to be familiar
Speaker 1: with the concept, and multiple Islamic authors, according to Sosiali,
Speaker 1: reference it, and that some of these points to specific
Speaker 1: observation wells, not just in the generality of this being
Speaker 1: a thing. So a few examples of this. Maraga Observatory,
Speaker 1: founded in twelve fifty seven, was said to be in
Speaker 1: observation well, but Salways thinks this may be a mistake
Speaker 1: in reference not to the observatory but to caves beneath
Speaker 1: the observatory. That quote do not, so far as is known,
Speaker 1: form any vertical well. Another one he mentions is the
Speaker 1: Jaja bay Marassa of Kishier, Anatolia, founded in twelve seventy two.
Speaker 1: This was used as an observatory and was said to
Speaker 1: have an observation well formed via a circular hole cut
Speaker 1: in the roof of the dome of the Madrassa building,
Speaker 1: and that this was for daytime star observation. Now, on
Speaker 1: this count, Psiali writes that there is evidence of their
Speaker 1: having been a well here. But first of all, it
Speaker 1: was probably not dry, and this could mean that if
Speaker 1: it was used for an astronomical aid, it was so
Speaker 1: that one could look at the reflection of the sky
Speaker 1: in the water. And there are references apparently to this practice.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so this connects to I think the way
Speaker 1: that Plenty in particular phrased it as opposed to Aristotle,
Speaker 1: because Plenty said that you could see the stars reflected
Speaker 1: in a very deep well, And so I'd wonder there
Speaker 1: that there might be different optical effects at play. If
Speaker 1: you're not standing in the bottom of a well looking
Speaker 1: up trying to see the stars in daytime, but looking
Speaker 1: down at the water in a dark well to see
Speaker 1: if it's quote unquote reflecting the nighttime stars even during
Speaker 1: the daytime, right, Yeah, so I think there could It
Speaker 1: seems to be the case where you're dealing with a
Speaker 1: different reported phenomena becoming confused with each other, you know, like,
Speaker 1: can you can you look up from from the bottom
Speaker 1: of well and see the sky? Yes? Can you see stars? Well, yes,
Speaker 1: potentially if it is nighttime, but then that can be
Speaker 1: you know, crossed into something else. Likewise, you could have
Speaker 1: a situation where where the reflection in the well, in
Speaker 1: the well water could be used to see the stars
Speaker 1: at night, but that doesn't mean you can see them
Speaker 1: in the daytime. Now. A third example that Ssiali brings
Speaker 1: up is the is Ten Bowl Observatory found it in
Speaker 1: fifteen seventy nine, and it did have this particular site
Speaker 1: apparently did have an observation well or tower, and there
Speaker 1: is confirmation of this in both Turkish and European sources. However,
Speaker 1: the observatory was demolished not long after its founding. So
Speaker 1: Siali says it might never have been used, or just
Speaker 1: there are no records of it being used. I saw
Speaker 1: some different dates on this. Perhaps it might have been
Speaker 1: founded in fifteen seventy seven, but it seems like it
Speaker 1: was destroyed in something like fifteen eighty, just a very
Speaker 1: short period later, and the destruction was possibly due to
Speaker 1: religious opposition to astronomy. So Siali mentions that there's a
Speaker 1: sixteen thirty mention of observers and students glimpsing the stars
Speaker 1: in the daytime from the bottom of a very deep
Speaker 1: well in Cuimbra, Portugal, and there are also accounts from
Speaker 1: Spain apparently. And then we have an individual by the
Speaker 1: name of Erhard Weigel, court mathematician to Duke Wilhelm the
Speaker 1: fourth of Bavaria. He had a house built in sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven in Jenna, and it was said to have
Speaker 1: a quote slant tube built into the wall in order
Speaker 1: to allow the daytime observation of the stars. You shared
Speaker 1: with me a painting of all Erhard here. And this
Speaker 1: guy is such a mood he's I don't even know
Speaker 1: how to describe this he. I mean, he looks like
Speaker 1: a very sensitive boy posing for a photo with his dog,
Speaker 1: you know, like pointing to the dog, except it's just
Speaker 1: like a big table of mathematical figures. Yeah. Yeah. My
Speaker 1: first thought was like, here is a man who loves
Speaker 1: his maths. If you look him up on Wikipedia, you'll
Speaker 1: see this particular painting. There are other images of him
Speaker 1: that are not that don't strike the same tone. But
Speaker 1: I do really like this painting. It looks like he's
Speaker 1: like doing his equations and he's going, who's a good
Speaker 1: boy now? Sayali also mentions that the Paris Observatory he
Speaker 1: found in sixteen sixty seven through sixteen seventy five feet
Speaker 1: a vertical hole which, via the caves below, formed a
Speaker 1: fifty five meter deep well. Quote It was said that Cassini,
Speaker 1: shortly after the foundation of the observatory, considered the possibility
Speaker 1: of its use for daytime observation of the stars, as
Speaker 1: one of the brightest stars of the constellation Perseus, he said,
Speaker 1: would come within the field of view of the well,
Speaker 1: and approximately forty years now. This is interesting to keep
Speaker 1: in mind talking about the field of view of the well,
Speaker 1: because I think this can be telling and given some
Speaker 1: of the analysis out there. Cassini apparently used the well
Speaker 1: himself and had another well built. But around this time,
Speaker 1: Sili says, astronomical advancements may have made venturing down into
Speaker 1: a well just increasingly obsolete. However, Siali mentions that there
Speaker 1: were rumors that a janitor at the observatory had a
Speaker 1: side hustle of taking people down into the pit to
Speaker 1: glampst the stars. What is this the seventeenth century? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I'm not sure exactly when this, uh, when the janitors.
Speaker 1: This may may have come later. Okay, yeah, but it
Speaker 1: sounds very at groundpo doesn't huh. One more example that
Speaker 1: Siali mentions is the Chrest Monster Observatory in Austria found
Speaker 1: a seventeen forty eight that has a fifty nine meter
Speaker 1: deep well said to have been used as an observation
Speaker 1: well as well. Well. Given all of these examples and
Speaker 1: anecdotes from history of people saying they could do this
Speaker 1: or building facilities in which to do this, I'm starting
Speaker 1: to have my doubts. I'm like, wait a minute, can
Speaker 1: you actually I don't know, I mean, like, would all
Speaker 1: these people be building starlight tubes and observation wells and
Speaker 1: towers and stuff and talking about this all the time.
Speaker 1: If there weren't something to this story I'm having, I'm
Speaker 1: doubting myself. Yeah, I had the same experience with it,
Speaker 1: And and Sialia is basically discussing the same thing. He's like,
Speaker 1: it would just be strange if this idea persisted for
Speaker 1: so long and people did all these things, if there
Speaker 1: wasn't something to it, if there wasn't some factual basis
Speaker 1: to the whole enterprise, because you know, dudes are incorporating
Speaker 1: this into their house plans, you know, a buddy. He
Speaker 1: does point out, Yeah, there was. There were. There were
Speaker 1: certainly skeptics as well, including Alexander von Humboldt, who who
Speaker 1: discussed on the show before old friend of the Show,
Speaker 1: the subject of a really great biography by Andrea Wolfe
Speaker 1: called The Invention of Nature I highly recommend. Very interesting.
Speaker 1: I'd say Von Humboldt was very important for promoting a
Speaker 1: kind of a total view of science that kind of
Speaker 1: the connected all of the natural world together into a
Speaker 1: vast system of interlocking causes and effects, and viewed nature
Speaker 1: not just as discreet entities of here's this animal and
Speaker 1: here's this plant, but as an ecology as a system
Speaker 1: of interactions in which everything affected every other thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so he comes along and you know, he's evidently
Speaker 1: he's read about this and he's familiar with the concept.
Speaker 1: But then he's he says, well, I've okay, I spoke
Speaker 1: with Chimney Sweeps, I spoke with Miners, I've spoke with
Speaker 1: other people who had ventured down into into conditions just
Speaker 1: like this. And apparently he sought those conditions out himself,
Speaker 1: and he did not experience this. He was not able
Speaker 1: to see the stars. No, when he spoke to had
Speaker 1: direct experience of having seen the stars this way. And
Speaker 1: he's just one of There are a few other historical
Speaker 1: critics of the notion as well that Psiali mentions. But
Speaker 1: but I think Alexander van Homboldt probably though this is
Speaker 1: one of the more robust ones coming along where he's
Speaker 1: just saying, yeah, nobody I spoke to has actually experienced this,
Speaker 1: and and ultimately Psyali even though he's like, again he's thinking,
Speaker 1: there's you know, people have been doing this and circulating
Speaker 1: this idea. There's is there absolutely nothing to it? He
Speaker 1: does stress that quote, although such wells were connected with observatories,
Speaker 1: there is no evidence that such observatories were systematically made
Speaker 1: and utilized by astronomer, So the whole practice could have
Speaker 1: been largely theoretical, even a you know, an ultimate basis
Speaker 1: for it could ultimately be more imagination than anything. But
Speaker 1: he thinks that the whole enterprise might have been connected
Speaker 1: more to focusing on particular areas of the sky. So again,
Speaker 1: come think, think about like what this would mean to
Speaker 1: stand at the bottom of a well and look up
Speaker 1: through the circular aperture of the well and behold the sky,
Speaker 1: behold the sky at night to see the stars. You
Speaker 1: would it would in a sense, you know, it would
Speaker 1: limit what you could see. It would take that just
Speaker 1: overwhelming starscape and limit it to just a single circle
Speaker 1: of observation. Yeah, maybe if you were trying to focus
Speaker 1: on particular stars as they passed through during a night
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. And then likewise, I guess
Speaker 1: if you had a similar setup and you were looking
Speaker 1: at stars were flected in the water, you could and
Speaker 1: it was very still water and the reflection was just right,
Speaker 1: you could have something similar going on. But in terms
Speaker 1: of yeah, basically, anybody who comes up against this idea
Speaker 1: of it being somehow a way to see the stars
Speaker 1: during the daylight. Every nobody agrees that this is possible.
Speaker 1: For instance, this is This is brought up in the
Speaker 1: book Bad Astronomy by phil Plate, for example, and he
Speaker 1: also points out that Charles Dickens wrote of it as well,
Speaker 1: and he says that he's never heard a decent explanation
Speaker 1: as to why this would work well. One nice takedown
Speaker 1: of the whole idea came from the Reverend William Frederick
Speaker 1: Archdall Ellison in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen, writing quote, A very little scientific reason,
Speaker 1: even without experiment, will be sufficient to dispose of it.
Speaker 1: For what is it which hides the star in the daytime?
Speaker 1: It is merely the glare of our atmosphere, illuminated by
Speaker 1: the Sun's rays. As the atmosphere extends to a height
Speaker 1: of fifty miles or more above the Earth's surface, a
Speaker 1: shaft or chimney one hundred to two hundred feet high
Speaker 1: could do but little to take away that glare. And
Speaker 1: anyone who has ever actually looked up from the bottom
Speaker 1: of such a shaft, as I have from the bottom
Speaker 1: of a colliery. This is a British term by the
Speaker 1: way a coal mine and the buildings and equipment associated
Speaker 1: with it nine hundred feet below the surface must have
Speaker 1: been struck not by the darkness of the little disc
Speaker 1: of sky visible, but by its dazzling brilliance. And this
Speaker 1: is something that people come back to. It's like, if
Speaker 1: you actually seek out this experience of gazing up through
Speaker 1: a shaft at the sky, at the daytime sky, it's
Speaker 1: the sky's not going to be dark, it's going to
Speaker 1: be super bright. It's going to be overwhelmingly bright. Now
Speaker 1: I totally agree with that. That seems right to me.
Speaker 1: I do have a counterposing idea. I wonder if you
Speaker 1: were able to build a tower like some of these
Speaker 1: supposed observation towers that extended up beyond the top of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, then that might actually work. Ooh, I did
Speaker 1: not see anyone discussing this idea, This idea that through
Speaker 1: some sort of futuristic megaproject we might be able to
Speaker 1: make the daytime a well observatory possible. Yeah, like you
Speaker 1: build a space elevator and it's just it's a tube
Speaker 1: going up beyond the atmosphere. Even then, I'm not positive
Speaker 1: that would work. I think it probably would. I guess
Speaker 1: it might depend on where the sun is at the
Speaker 1: moment relative to like is any of the sunlight shooting
Speaker 1: down in there. So many commentators also speak to this
Speaker 1: whole notion being predicated on a misunderstanding of what a
Speaker 1: telescope does, certainly in the later cases and later circulation
Speaker 1: of the idea, and that you know, ultimately it's focusing
Speaker 1: more on the tube rather than the lenses, which are
Speaker 1: vital to the workings of a telescope, right, not understanding
Speaker 1: that the purpose of the telescope is to gather light
Speaker 1: from a from a wider surface and then project that
Speaker 1: down into your eye to increase the resolution. One such
Speaker 1: commentator was Patricia O'Grady, who wrote on the subject in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two in a paper title day Leaves
Speaker 1: of my Leidas The Beginnings of Western philosophy and Science.
Speaker 1: She contends that such wells were used at night as
Speaker 1: a means of isolating portions of the night sky for
Speaker 1: consideration and study. Quote, descending into a well and peering
Speaker 1: up the extent of the well would isolate areas to
Speaker 1: be observed, and the rim of the well being similar
Speaker 1: to that to the tube about which Aristotle wrote, would
Speaker 1: be a sort of quote unquote telescope but lacking magnification.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, okay, yeah, so you know it's there was
Speaker 1: so much more too than I expected. But it seems
Speaker 1: like we can think of observation wells as being a
Speaker 1: mix of secondhand accounts signal boosted by important writers and
Speaker 1: thinkers during their times, backed up by hypothetical models, as
Speaker 1: well as the seeming at least limited use of such
Speaker 1: wells as a means of isolating portions of the night
Speaker 1: sky for study at night. Yeah, that all seems reasonable
Speaker 1: to me. I'm still hung up on the idea that
Speaker 1: there could also be some kind of garbling of a
Speaker 1: report of an optical effect that somebody got from looking
Speaker 1: down at the sunlight reflected in water in a dark well,
Speaker 1: and that maybe ripples in the water or something. I've
Speaker 1: never tried it, so I don't know what that would
Speaker 1: be like, but I could imagine that could look like
Speaker 1: many points of light instead of one. Yeah. That's a
Speaker 1: good point, now, Rob. It's funny you mentioned this book
Speaker 1: by Patricio Grady about Theles of Melitas, because the other
Speaker 1: half of this coin the idea of a stargazer in
Speaker 1: a well connects very directly to a famous anecdote about
Speaker 1: this philosopher. So Thals of Melitas was a pre Socratic
Speaker 1: Greek philosopher who lived from the late seventh century to
Speaker 1: the mid sixth century BC. He was one of the
Speaker 1: famous Seven Sages of Greece, and as he was revered
Speaker 1: by other ancient philosophers and writers as in many ways
Speaker 1: kind of the primary patriarch of wisdom. He was thought
Speaker 1: to be in a sense the first philosopher, and in
Speaker 1: more recent centuries he's been seen by some as quote
Speaker 1: the father of science, though I think both of those
Speaker 1: designations are a good bit overstated. Though Thyles was a
Speaker 1: very interesting figure. Going to the idea of him being
Speaker 1: the quote father of science, I would say in an
Speaker 1: informal way, there were empirical observations and experiments and deterministic
Speaker 1: theories of nature. Of course, all go on before Thales,
Speaker 1: no doubt, but he was famous in ancient Greece for
Speaker 1: appealing to natural material causes rather than ad hoc mythological
Speaker 1: explanations when trying to understand nature and the world. So,
Speaker 1: like many ancient Greek philosophers, from Pythagoras to Socrates, we
Speaker 1: actually have no surviving copies of any text by Thles himself,
Speaker 1: so if he wrote anything down himself, we no longer
Speaker 1: have it. The only sources we have for his life
Speaker 1: and his work are what other people wrote about him,
Speaker 1: which of course makes it complicated to know with much
Speaker 1: certainty what he actually said and believed. So everything that
Speaker 1: follows that we're going to say about Thales comes with
Speaker 1: the major caveat that it is based on secondary sources,
Speaker 1: often writing much later than Thaile's own lifetime, because it's
Speaker 1: all we have. Thales was known for wisdom in not
Speaker 1: just what we would later call science, but in many domains,
Speaker 1: including in mathematics. He was famous for bringing Egyptian geometry
Speaker 1: to Greek thought, and for philosophy and politics. He was
Speaker 1: given credit for the maxim know Thyself, which I have
Speaker 1: to say I find one of the most powerful aphorisms
Speaker 1: of all time. You know, know thyself is two words long,
Speaker 1: and it really hits you. It's like a wrecking ball,
Speaker 1: like it manages to be simultaneously empowering and humbling. And
Speaker 1: there's a whole rich tradition of other philosophers simply trying
Speaker 1: to explain what they think is meant exactly by the
Speaker 1: statement know thyself. Is it an admonition to know your
Speaker 1: place and be humble in the face of the gods?
Speaker 1: Is it a warning to know your own limitations? Is
Speaker 1: it an exhortation to deeper philosophical understanding, to understand what
Speaker 1: you are in a way? Maybe it's all of these things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's a great naval gazer. That one. More, the
Speaker 1: more you think about it, the slippery it becomes. Now,
Speaker 1: at this time, there was not much of a division
Speaker 1: between what we would today call science and what the
Speaker 1: ancient Greeks would call philosophy. It was it was sort
Speaker 1: of all the same thing. It was the pursuit of knowledge.
Speaker 1: But I guess the more scientific version of ancient Greek
Speaker 1: philosophy would be the kind that focused on explanations of
Speaker 1: the natural world and appealing to natural causes. A lot
Speaker 1: of the science that Thilees believed in has not exactly
Speaker 1: held up to later scrutiny. For just one example, he
Speaker 1: was known for arguing that earthquakes were caused by the
Speaker 1: fact that the continents, the land on which we walk,
Speaker 1: is actually part of a great a great disc that
Speaker 1: floats on water and sometimes the continents or the discs
Speaker 1: on which the continent's rest are rocked by waves in
Speaker 1: the underlying cosmic ocean. For ancient accounts of this belief
Speaker 1: of Thiles, I want to go back to actually a.
Speaker 1: Patricio Grady, the source you mentioned earlier. In her book
Speaker 1: on Thles, she, for example, quote Seneca, who says the
Speaker 1: cause of earthquakes is said to be in water by
Speaker 1: more than one authority, but not in the same way
Speaker 1: Thales of Melitas judges that the whole earth is buoyed
Speaker 1: up and floats upon liquid that lies underneath the disc
Speaker 1: is supported by this water, he says, just as some
Speaker 1: big heavy ship is supported by the water which it
Speaker 1: presses down upon. And elsewhere. Seneca actually mocks Thales for
Speaker 1: his beliefs. He says the following theory by Thales is silly,
Speaker 1: for he says that this round of lands is sustained
Speaker 1: by water and is carried along like a boat. And
Speaker 1: on the occasions when the earth is said to quake,
Speaker 1: it is fluctuating because of the movement of the water.
Speaker 1: It is no wonder therefore, that there is abundant water
Speaker 1: for making the rivers flow, since the entire round is
Speaker 1: in water. Reject this antiquated, unscholarly theory. There is also
Speaker 1: no reason that you should believe water enters this globe
Speaker 1: through cracks and forms. Bilge Okay, I will not believe
Speaker 1: in the billage then again convinced me. But also to
Speaker 1: continue with the ocean theme, Thaley's quite remarkably believed that
Speaker 1: the entire basis of matter was water. And it can
Speaker 1: be difficult to parse exactly what he means by this,
Speaker 1: but I think it's commonly interpreted to mean that all
Speaker 1: matter is in some way a form of water. So
Speaker 1: much like liquid water can turn into vapor, or it
Speaker 1: can freeze into a solid ice cube, then it can
Speaker 1: take on other forms as well, and in fact it
Speaker 1: does take on all the forms we see in the world.
Speaker 1: Every piece of matter is some type of water or
Speaker 1: is in some way derived from water. And of course
Speaker 1: this is wrong, but it does wander kind of close
Speaker 1: to a profound truth that would be discovered much later,
Speaker 1: which is that as fundamentally different as all the substances
Speaker 1: of the world, blood magma would air. As different as
Speaker 1: all these things might seem, they're actually made of exactly
Speaker 1: the same fundamental building blocks. Not water, but the subatomic
Speaker 1: particles protons, neutrons, electrons in different quantities and arrangements. So
Speaker 1: he was wrong about the water part but I do
Speaker 1: think it's still a rather profound hypothesis that at bottom,
Speaker 1: all matter is made of the same stuff. Now, coming
Speaker 1: back to the designation that some authors have used for Thales,
Speaker 1: as quote the Father of Science, I think one of
Speaker 1: the big stories leading to that designation, Like I know this,
Speaker 1: there was a piece at some point that Isaac Asimov
Speaker 1: wrote about this. The connecting point here is that there
Speaker 1: are reports from the ancient world that Thailes did occasionally
Speaker 1: make testable predictions that proved correct, such as in Matters
Speaker 1: of Astronomy, where the historian Herodotus claims that Thales correctly
Speaker 1: predicted a solar eclipse in advance with profound geopolitical implications
Speaker 1: for an ongoing war with between the Meads and the Lydians.
Speaker 1: So to fill out this story a bit, I'm going
Speaker 1: to describe and quote from Herodotus the translation by A. D. Godly,
Speaker 1: So a bit of background. Herodotus tells us that at
Speaker 1: some point in history, a tribe of nomadic Scythians escaped
Speaker 1: some trouble in their own lands, and they escaped into
Speaker 1: the territory of the Medians or the Meads, who were
Speaker 1: ruled by a king named Siaxaris. The Scythians asked for mercy,
Speaker 1: and Ssiaxaris granted it, and even gave over some Median
Speaker 1: young men to the Scythians to sort of like live
Speaker 1: with them and learn their language and to learn archery
Speaker 1: from them. But there came a day when the Scythians
Speaker 1: returned from a hunt with nothing to offer their new king,
Speaker 1: and Siasaries being short tempered, he took their lack of
Speaker 1: game as an insult, and he gave him a really
Speaker 1: bad chewing out. I think the direct quote is he
Speaker 1: treated them contemptuously. So in revenge for being dressed down,
Speaker 1: some of the Scythians took the young Meads their pupils
Speaker 1: and killed them and dressed their bodies and presented them
Speaker 1: to the king as if they were animals killed in
Speaker 1: a hunt. Then they immediately fled the domain of the
Speaker 1: Meads and went to the domain of a king named
Speaker 1: al Yadis of Sardists. All right, this is already spiraling
Speaker 1: out of control. This is a bad situation, right, So
Speaker 1: Sayaxares was tricked, and indeed he did eat the flesh
Speaker 1: of his young countrymen, thinking it was wild game. And
Speaker 1: after he found out, he wasn't very happy about it,
Speaker 1: and he went to al Yadis and said, Hey, these
Speaker 1: guys made me do cannibalism. You need to give them
Speaker 1: over to me. So now I'm just going to quote
Speaker 1: from the Herodotus translation. After this, since al Yadis would
Speaker 1: not give up the Scythians to Siasaries at his demand,
Speaker 1: there was a war between the Lydians and the Meads
Speaker 1: for five years, each won mini victory over the other,
Speaker 1: and once they fought a battle by night. They were
Speaker 1: still warring with equal success when it happened at an
Speaker 1: encounter which occurred in the sixth year, that during the
Speaker 1: battle the day was suddenly turned to night. Thals of
Speaker 1: Melitas had foretold this loss of daylight to the Ionians,
Speaker 1: fixing it within a year, at which the change did
Speaker 1: indeed happen. So when the Lydians and Meads saw the
Speaker 1: day turn tonight, they stopped fighting, and both were the
Speaker 1: more eager to make peace, And apparently they did make
Speaker 1: peace by securing a marriage between between the children of
Speaker 1: the two kings. Happy ending there you go, though, I
Speaker 1: have to imagine there was a good bit of like, hey,
Speaker 1: remember when your dad did cannibalism, and then my dad
Speaker 1: helped the people who made him do it. There's probably
Speaker 1: still some bad blood. But you know, you get a
Speaker 1: nice wedding ceremony in there. You know, it's well catered.
Speaker 1: It's gonna it's gonna could calm a lot of the waters. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the story again is that Thales predicted this
Speaker 1: solar eclipse that interrupted the middle of a battle. He
Speaker 1: predicted it in advance. Later scientists have worked out that
Speaker 1: this must be a reference to the solar eclipse of
Speaker 1: May twenty eight, five eighty five BC, because that's the
Speaker 1: only one within the right time frame that would have
Speaker 1: been visible at the place in question, and that does
Speaker 1: all work out. But if it's true that Thales predicted
Speaker 1: the eclipse in advance, this is an absolutely extraordinary claim,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of modern scholars have doubts
Speaker 1: about this story. So we know lunar eclipses where the
Speaker 1: shadow of the Earth passes over the face of the moon,
Speaker 1: these have been predicted going way way back, long before Thayles.
Speaker 1: The court Astronomers of ancient China and ancient Babylon were
Speaker 1: able to figure out these patterns and draw up tables,
Speaker 1: allowing them to predict lunar eclipses, but solar eclipses, where
Speaker 1: the Moon passes directly between the Earth and the Sun,
Speaker 1: blocking out the sunlight, these are much much harder to predict,
Speaker 1: especially because they are localized to specific vantage points on
Speaker 1: Earth's surface. I mean, there are solar eclipses all the time,
Speaker 1: but living wherever you do, you don't see most of them.
Speaker 1: They're they're on some other part of the globe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like if you've scout tried to scout one out for yourself,
Speaker 1: you may have encountered this situation where you know, someone's like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a solar eclipse coming up, and you're like, great,
Speaker 1: when can we see it? And it's like, well, on
Speaker 1: this date, if we're in Arkansas or parts of Texas, right,
Speaker 1: there's the solar eclipse coming, we have to travel to
Speaker 1: Baffin Island. Yeah, that sort of thing. But that being said,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have the ability to go witness
Speaker 1: solar eclipse under safe circumstances, that absolutely do so, because
Speaker 1: it's it's wonderful. Oh absolutely, yes, it is worth it
Speaker 1: is one of the most magical experiences of my life. Now,
Speaker 1: the first solar eclipse is that we know for sure
Speaker 1: we're predicted in advance, came after we had much better
Speaker 1: astrophysical theories in hand. This would be in the early
Speaker 1: eighteenth century. The first case where we know for sure
Speaker 1: that someone accurately predicted to solar eclipse was on May third,
Speaker 1: seventeen fifteen, when English astronomer Edmund Halley of Halley's Comet fame,
Speaker 1: built upon the scientific revolution unlocked by Isaac Newton's theory
Speaker 1: of universal gravitation. Halle was a friend of Newton's and
Speaker 1: he used Newton's new theories to accurately pinpoint and eclipse
Speaker 1: that would be visible in London. And I think he
Speaker 1: got it right within a margin of about four minutes.
Speaker 1: But Hallie's prediction and all subsequent solar eclipse predictions, they
Speaker 1: require a lot of information that was, as far as
Speaker 1: we know, not available in ancient Greece. And unfortunately no
Speaker 1: writings of Thailees exist today. As I said, and Herodotus
Speaker 1: does not bother to mention the method by which Thaylees
Speaker 1: made this prediction. I don't think other authors who mentioned
Speaker 1: this story share any further insights either, and so we
Speaker 1: and we also don't know what the level of precision
Speaker 1: of this prediction would have been, though the herodotus does
Speaker 1: say that it took place that year, which makes me
Speaker 1: wonder if it's possible Thailies just said there will be
Speaker 1: a solar eclipse sometime this year and got extremely lucky.
Speaker 1: But ultimately we don't know. We don't know what was
Speaker 1: going on here if he actually did make the prediction
Speaker 1: and it was correct. Did he just have an amazing
Speaker 1: stroke of luck, or did he have some kind of
Speaker 1: incredibly advanced type of knowledge about astrophysics that nobody else
Speaker 1: at the time had and he left no record of it.
Speaker 1: And as with the observation, wells, we're dealing with you
Speaker 1: secondhand accounts in vague references here, right, So also we
Speaker 1: don't even know for sure it's true that he made
Speaker 1: this prediction, though it seems to be a widely attested story,
Speaker 1: and we do know the eclipse did happen. Now, I
Speaker 1: was reading about a few other scientific contributions of Thales.
Speaker 1: One source I was looking at was by W. KC.
Speaker 1: Guthrie called a History of Greek Philosophy volume one, the
Speaker 1: earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans. This was Cambridge University Press,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, and Guthrie collects a lot of observations.
Speaker 1: He writes that Thales made gave guidance about the relative
Speaker 1: usefulness of different constellations for c navigation, pointing out that
Speaker 1: the minor bear the little bear constellation was better than
Speaker 1: the Great bear for finding the poll and this story
Speaker 1: was related by Callimachus. Apparently, the use of the minor
Speaker 1: bear was already in practice by the Phoenicians, and Thales
Speaker 1: showed why it was better than the Greek standard of
Speaker 1: versa major. He apparently also is said to have used
Speaker 1: geometry to measure the dimensions of the pyramids, and to
Speaker 1: show how you could calculate how far away a ship
Speaker 1: at c was. And in summary, writing about the Thile's
Speaker 1: reputation in ancient Greece, Guthrie says, quote, once he had
Speaker 1: achieved in the popular mind the status of the ideal
Speaker 1: man of science, there is no doubt that the stories
Speaker 1: about him were invented or selected according to the picture
Speaker 1: of the philosophic temperament, which a particular writer wished to
Speaker 1: convey and so Guthrie goes on to describe an example
Speaker 1: of what he calls this quote mutually canceling propaganda, which
Speaker 1: is the contrast between the story of the olive presses
Speaker 1: and the story of the fall into a well or
Speaker 1: into a pit. And these are given respectively by Aristotle
Speaker 1: and Plato. I'm going to start with the story of
Speaker 1: the olive presses, which we have from Aristotle, so this
Speaker 1: is an Aristotle's politics translation by Benjamin Jowitt. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to read directly. Aristotle says, there is the anecdote
Speaker 1: of Thales, the Miletian and his financial device, which involves
Speaker 1: a principle of universal application, but is attributed to him
Speaker 1: on account of his reputation for wisdom. He was reproached
Speaker 1: for his poverty, which was supposed to show that philosophy
Speaker 1: was of no use. According to this story, he knew
Speaker 1: by his skill in the stars, while it was yet winter,
Speaker 1: that there would be a great harvest of olives in
Speaker 1: the coming year. So having little money, he gave deposits
Speaker 1: for the use of all the olive presses in chias
Speaker 1: and militas, which he hired at a low price. Because
Speaker 1: no one bid against him when the harvest time came
Speaker 1: and many were wanted all at once, and of a
Speaker 1: sudden he let them out at any rate which he pleased,
Speaker 1: and made a quantity of money. Thus he showed the
Speaker 1: world that philosophers can easily be rich if they like,
Speaker 1: but that their ambition is of another sort. And you
Speaker 1: notice at the beginning that Aristotle said this financial device,
Speaker 1: he says, involves a principle of universal application. So Aristotle
Speaker 1: is actually saying, you know, the thing that they lees
Speaker 1: is doing this story is a well known move. It's
Speaker 1: called monopoly. The exploitation of a monopoly is a standard,
Speaker 1: well known commercial and political practice, and he gives examples
Speaker 1: having to do with like cornering the iron supply in
Speaker 1: a local area or something. Of course, the principle is,
Speaker 1: if you're the only person selling something and it's in demand,
Speaker 1: then you can set whatever price you want. So you know,
Speaker 1: when a smart person figures out how to create a monopoly,
Speaker 1: how to be the only person offering a good or
Speaker 1: service that is needed, they will use this to their advantage.
Speaker 1: I guess, with the caveat of unless they're a philosopher
Speaker 1: who is above worldly concerns, it will only gouge to
Speaker 1: make a point. Yeah. I love this. It's like there's like, hey, hey, Thailees,
Speaker 1: if you're so smart, why aren't you rich? And he's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I could do that if I wanted to hear,
Speaker 1: he proves himself and then it goes back to whatever
Speaker 1: he was doing beforehand, right, Yeah, So it portrays that
Speaker 1: the Lees as worldly, full of potential for practical cunning,
Speaker 1: but simply lacking interest in financial gain unless it's to
Speaker 1: own the haters. All right. So that's one vision, one
Speaker 1: invoked vision of Thales. What's another one. Well, here's where
Speaker 1: we come back to the idea of the stargazer in
Speaker 1: the well. So Plato tells this totally different story of Thales.
Speaker 1: This takes place in Plato's Theatitis dialogue. And if you've
Speaker 1: ever taken a logic or a philosophy course that tried
Speaker 1: to define the word knowledge, you might have encountered the Theatitas,
Speaker 1: because I believe this is the one where Socrates builds
Speaker 1: up to a definition of knowledge as something like true belief,
Speaker 1: with an account sometimes paraphrased as justified true belief. So
Speaker 1: under this definition, to know something, to actually have knowledge,
Speaker 1: it means you have one a belief to which is true,
Speaker 1: because if you believe something but it's false, that's not knowledge.
Speaker 1: And three, it is something of which you are aware
Speaker 1: of a warrant for believing. So if you believe something
Speaker 1: and it turns out to be true, but you had
Speaker 1: no good reason for believing it, that's still not knowledge.
Speaker 1: Like if if I believe I'm going to win the
Speaker 1: lottery this year, and then I happened to win the
Speaker 1: lottery this year, that was not knowledge. I had no
Speaker 1: good reason to believe that. I just got lucky. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the story of the stargazer in the well is actually
Speaker 1: a digression within this dialogue. So I'm quoting from the
Speaker 1: Fowler translation of Plato here. So this is Socrates speaking,
Speaker 1: and Socrates says, take the case of Thles, he speaking
Speaker 1: to somebody named Theodorus. Take the case of Thales. Theodorus,
Speaker 1: while he was studying the stars and looking upwards, he
Speaker 1: fell into a pit sometimes translated as a well, and
Speaker 1: a neat witty Thracian servant girl jeered at him, They say,
Speaker 1: because he was so eager to know the things in
Speaker 1: the sky that he could not see what was there
Speaker 1: before him. It is very feet. The same jest applies
Speaker 1: to all who pass their lives in philosophy, and you
Speaker 1: can't actually find these charges in their original form in
Speaker 1: stuff like rob did you ever read the Clouds by Aristophanes?
Speaker 1: The play Mocking Socrates? No, I don't think I did.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, so it's a whole play is just vicious,
Speaker 1: brutal mockery of Socrates in the school of philosophers of Athens,
Speaker 1: showing them to be absolute buffoons who are wasting their
Speaker 1: lives just making up garbage about trivial and unimportant topics.
Speaker 1: And so in a way, I wonder if you know
Speaker 1: this is kind of responding to that sort of criticism,
Speaker 1: because yeah, it's the same kind of thing. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you think you're so smart, but you actually
Speaker 1: just fall into pits all the time, or you trip
Speaker 1: and fall into well because you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: ursa major and ursa minor. Yeah, nothing you do is
Speaker 1: practical and you're in the bottom of well, how'd you
Speaker 1: get their, old man, you must have tripped. It's also
Speaker 1: the classic oh philosophy major, how what are you going
Speaker 1: to do with that? And then so Socrates goes on
Speaker 1: to explain his view. I've made some abridgments to this section,
Speaker 1: but I just want to read part of what he says.
Speaker 1: Socrates says, hence it is my friends, such a man,
Speaker 1: both in private when he meets with individuals, and in public,
Speaker 1: as I said in the beginning, when he is obliged
Speaker 1: to speak in court or elsewhere about the things at
Speaker 1: his feet and before his eyes, is a laughing stock,
Speaker 1: not only to Thracian girls, but to the multitude in general.
Speaker 1: For he falls into pits and all sorts of perplexities
Speaker 1: through inexperience, and his awkwardness is terrible, making him seem
Speaker 1: a fool. For when it comes to abusing people, he
Speaker 1: has no personal abuse to offer against anyone, because he
Speaker 1: knows no evil of any man, never having cared for
Speaker 1: such things. So his perplexity makes him appear ridiculous. And
Speaker 1: as to laudatory speeches and the boastings of others, it
Speaker 1: becomes manifest that he is laughing at them, not pretending
Speaker 1: to laugh, but really laughing, and so he is thought
Speaker 1: to be a fool. When he hears a panegyric, meaning
Speaker 1: like a sort of a sermon praising the virtues of
Speaker 1: a public figure. When he hears a panegyric of a
Speaker 1: despot or a king, he fancies he is listening to
Speaker 1: the praises of some herdsman, a swineherd, a shepherd, or
Speaker 1: a neat herd, for instance, who gets much milk from
Speaker 1: his beasts. But he thinks that the ruler tens and
Speaker 1: milks a more perverse and treacherous creature than the herdsman,
Speaker 1: and that he must grow coarse and uncivilize no less
Speaker 1: than they, for he has no leisure and lives surrounded
Speaker 1: by a wall, as the herdsman live in their mountain pens.
Speaker 1: And when he hears that someone is amazingly rich because
Speaker 1: he owns ten thousand acres of land or more. To him,
Speaker 1: accustomed as he is to think of the whole earth,
Speaker 1: this seems very little. And he goes on and on
Speaker 1: at length, talking about how, you know, the common man
Speaker 1: might think himself very important because he claims to trace
Speaker 1: his ancestry back to to Heracles and Amphytrion. And meanwhile
Speaker 1: the philosopher is like, but everybody has thousands of ancestors
Speaker 1: of all kinds, what does that matter? And he just
Speaker 1: goes on and on, listing all these cases of the
Speaker 1: concerns of regular people who are squabbling over like power
Speaker 1: and money and prestige and hierarchy, and the philosopher who
Speaker 1: seems to them to be a fool because he cares
Speaker 1: not for those things. Now, I think it's interesting to
Speaker 1: sort of compare and contrast Aristotle's vision of the of
Speaker 1: Thales here versus Socrates' vision of Thales. Both essentially assume
Speaker 1: that true philosophers, and I think the modern reader might
Speaker 1: might sort of read this in a more inclusive way,
Speaker 1: just as the thoughtful person thoughtful people that they are
Speaker 1: above petty worldly concerns. But the olive press story communicates
Speaker 1: a kind of deliberate aloofness which can be subverted and
Speaker 1: cast side anytime when some wisecracker comes along and says,
Speaker 1: you know, like you said, Robert, hey, Thles, if you're
Speaker 1: so smart, how come you're not as rich as me?
Speaker 1: The point is here, Well, Thelees could be if he
Speaker 1: wanted to, that's just not his concern. Meanwhile, in the
Speaker 1: story told in the Plato's Dialogue here Socrates makes it
Speaker 1: sound like falling into the ditch and being mocked by
Speaker 1: the Thracian girl. It does communicate the same kind of aloofness,
Speaker 1: but in a more helpless and involuntary mode, like well, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: he might be so wrapped up in the stars that
Speaker 1: he falls into pits all the time and he's always
Speaker 1: ending up at the bottom of wells, But that's actually
Speaker 1: a sign of a virtuous mind, concerned with the stars
Speaker 1: and concerned with the nature of reality, rather than the
Speaker 1: nasty pettiness that occupies your mind, all of the grubby
Speaker 1: business and politics and social gossip and hierarchy that you're
Speaker 1: so obsessed with. Which is funny though, because it essentially
Speaker 1: comes down to these philosophers putting them selves at the
Speaker 1: top of a hierarchy and saying like, you know, my,
Speaker 1: my life of the mind is so much more virtuous
Speaker 1: than your existence. Yeah, I mean a little bit of hypocrisy. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: In both cases, the philosopher is disconnected from this world,
Speaker 1: and you know it didn't It basically just comes down
Speaker 1: to the nuances of what you're saying about that, like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's uh, they're disconnected from this world, yes,
Speaker 1: but if they wanted to game this world like other people,
Speaker 1: they could easily or you know, even if they're falling
Speaker 1: down wells. It's like, yeah, he's not concerned with wells
Speaker 1: and pits. Oh, you're so obsessed with the well thing.
Speaker 1: Come on. But it is interesting how this ties back
Speaker 1: in because you know, they Lees is said to be
Speaker 1: an individual who is very interested in the stars. Here
Speaker 1: he is falling into a well. And indeed some have
Speaker 1: looked at this, in particular that paper I cited earlier,
Speaker 1: and you also cited this off there. Patricia O'Grady um
Speaker 1: looks at this and says, yeah, this connection between an
Speaker 1: individual who is who analyzes the stars and fall in
Speaker 1: a well that they fall into. Perhaps this is also
Speaker 1: connected to the idea of a well being an observatory
Speaker 1: and they LEAs may have. And again we're dealing with
Speaker 1: second accounts and fictionalized and mythologicalized versions of reality. But
Speaker 1: on some level, maybe you have this individual falling into
Speaker 1: a well because that's the kind of place that that
Speaker 1: astronomers and philosophers go to. They're climbing to the bottom
Speaker 1: of a well to look up at the stars and
Speaker 1: and I don't know, it kind of falls that that
Speaker 1: that kind of just that basic vision uh kind of
Speaker 1: falls into these uh, these these views of philosophy that
Speaker 1: we've been discussing. Well, another theme that emerges for me
Speaker 1: is just the the tenuous and artificial nature of the
Speaker 1: distinctions between practical and impractical knowledge knowledge that knowledge which
Speaker 1: seems impractical today may in several hundred years becoming incredibly practical.
Speaker 1: The astronomy and the geometry of these ancient Greek philosophers
Speaker 1: might have seemed absolutely ridiculous and of no practical use
Speaker 1: whatsoever to to somebody at the time, but then they
Speaker 1: would sort of be built upon in generations to form
Speaker 1: the foundation of all existing technology, navigational techniques and you
Speaker 1: know everything like that. M yeah, yeah, I'm also suddenly
Speaker 1: struck by how how one could conceivably compare a stylight
Speaker 1: a you know, an individual a hermit atop a pillar,
Speaker 1: to the idea of a of an astronomer crawling down
Speaker 1: to the bottom of a pit. You know, both are
Speaker 1: kind of like they're removed from from the surface world,
Speaker 1: from the from the affairs of man, and in either
Speaker 1: case it's about, you know, contemplating things beyond the realm
Speaker 1: of man. This is funny. I've thought of potentially doing
Speaker 1: something about the stylite tradition on our on our show before.
Speaker 1: I can't remember. Has it ever come up in an episode?
Speaker 1: It was like, it's a particular type of asceticism where
Speaker 1: you would, you know, you would subject yourself to just
Speaker 1: living at the top of a pillar. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's come up. I don't know if we did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's come up at least once, But
Speaker 1: I don't remember the context. Maybe when we were talking
Speaker 1: about Diogenes and living among the dogs, Oh, Diogenes the
Speaker 1: cynic Yeah, living in a jar with some dogs eating
Speaker 1: fava beans or not fave Lupin's I think okay, I'd
Speaker 1: forgotten about the being consumption. Yes, yeah, okay, I've actually
Speaker 1: got a call to listeners. I'm curious if, if you're
Speaker 1: somebody out there with a good basis in astronomy and physics,
Speaker 1: what do you think is the most plausible scenario by
Speaker 1: which Thales could have truly predicted the five eighty five
Speaker 1: eclipse If the story is true, if you actually made
Speaker 1: the prediction and it was not just a lucky guess
Speaker 1: but actually justified true belief, that he had a warrant
Speaker 1: for believing that, what could it have been? Yeah? Right
Speaker 1: in let us know. Likewise, if you have any thoughts
Speaker 1: about the concept of glimpsing the stars from the bottom
Speaker 1: of a well, the bottom of a pit. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go and close out this episode, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone. Core episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed listener mail
Speaker 1: on Mondays, Artifact or Monster Fact on Wednesdays, and on Friday,
Speaker 1: we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us for feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
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