WEBVTT - Things We Believed Before the Scientific Method 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.960 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:13.560 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.000 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:23.239 should Know, the Let's get Jiggy with Science edition. You 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:27.240 know you're about to get jiggy Chuck with it, Yeah. 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:27.400 With it. 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:32.320 And it is this episode about what people believe before 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:33.600 the scientific method. 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:36.320 Yeah, you know, we have a pretty good episode on 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:40.040 the scientific method. And we have talked about some of 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:44.159 this stuff here and there throughout the years, like you know, 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:47.400 early science, and it's easy to make fun of that stuff, right, 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:49.960 but we are here not to make fun of it 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:53.760 and not necessarily to defend it, but to just put 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:58.280 it into perspective of where these people were at the time. 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:00.880 And you can see how long of this stuff made 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:01.720 sense at the time. 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:06.080 See that was as jiggy as it comes, all right, 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.360 see you later. Yeah, that was really well put and 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:11.080 just as a refresher real quick. So you don't have 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:13.319 to pause and go back and listen to our scientific 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:15.400 method episode. You can if you want, but if you 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:18.520 don't feel like doing that, the scientific method is just 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:23.160 basically a plan to keep yourself from going down blind 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:26.680 alleys or being misled by what seems to be the 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.800 case but isn't necessarily the case. Sometimes your own eyes 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:32.399 can lie to you, and it basically says is like, 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:37.360 based on you know, data you've collected or things you've observed, 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:41.560 form a hypothesis like this happens because of this, figure 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:44.960 out how to test it, test it, look at the results. 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:48.480 Did it support the hypothesis, did it not support the hypothesis, 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:51.240 and either keep going forward or go back to square one. 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:56.360 And by testing it, that's where the scientific method really shines. 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:00.160 And before the scientific method, people didn't do that. They 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:06.800 used their eyes, the empiricists, they formed theories, the rationalists 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:11.920 or dogmatists, they performed experiments, the methodists, that's really what 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:15.680 they called them. But they didn't actually like test this stuff, 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:19.760 and so they were able to create these theories that 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.880 were totally wrong. Sometimes we're really right, but in a 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:25.840 lot of cases we're really wrong. And that those things 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:29.280 were adopted for like thousands of years in some cases. 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:31.720 Yeah, because a lot of science was mixed up with 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:35.240 philosophy for a long long time. And as you'll see 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:37.799 with some of these like if you had a good 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:42.639 enough sort of philosophical thought about something and other people said, hey, 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:44.960 that makes sense, and you kept repeating it a lot. 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:47.560 Then at the time people were like, well that's good 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:48.000 enough for. 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:50.960 Us, Yeah, which meant also if philosophy was in there, 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:54.240 you had to also had to explain why more than 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:58.079 be reliably consistent in its results. 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:00.400 Yeah, exactly. So. 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:03.280 One of the first ones that I think people think 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.680 of when they think of ancient science as the Four 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:11.359 Humors humors of medicine, which was something that came along 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:15.600 from Hippocrates all the way back in I think the 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:20.520 fourth or fifth century BCE and was in place until 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:25.840 the sixteen hundreds. Essentially that was how people practice medicine. 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:30.200 Yeah, I mean that's a long run. Hippocrates probably did 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:34.000 not make it up himself. It's theorized that he probably 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.440 brought it over or he didn't necessarily, but it was 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:42.160 brought over to the Greeks, maybe from India, maybe from Egypt. 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:46.360 But Hippocrates ran with it, and then Galen really ran 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:49.760 with it. And Galen is who is probably most people 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:51.640 think of Galen when they think of the humors, the 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:56.280 four humors, right, but humore h m R is Latin 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:58.960 meaning fluid. And that's basically what they're talking about with 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:04.000 the four humors. Almost at humids, the four humors, which 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:08.120 are the fluids of the body, and we should just 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:13.240 name them quickly, I think, yeah, fl flim you got blood, 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:16.480 and then you got the two biles. You got black 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:18.599 bile and yellow bile. 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:23.440 Right, And those things are not just the sum total 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:26.240 of what was studied or what was responsible for ill 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:29.680 health or for health. They almost stood in for a 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:32.800 bunch of other things too, Like your energy could be 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:37.440 low or angry or overly happy, and all those were 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:41.039 associated with different humors, right. So I think it was 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:46.479 Palamar University website on it basically put it like more 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:50.159 than just fluids themselves. You could think of the humors 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:55.440 as those things that flow fluids, energy, that kind of stuff. Yeah, 0:04:55.480 --> 0:05:00.600 and all these humors also had complexions. They had they 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:03.800 were either wet or dry, cold or hot, and there 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:05.360 were combinations. 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:08.520 Of those but not And it's not literally that no, 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:11.120 a little confusing, it's super duper confusing. 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:13.320 And I think this is an example of what happens 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:17.160 when people over a couple thousand years kind of contribute 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:19.280 to stuff. It gets a little off kilter. 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:22.240 Yeah, like blood is hot and wet, But that didn't 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:24.880 necessarily mean they're saying that when you touch blood it 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:29.160 was hot to the touch, right. It's almost like what 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:34.280 a synesthesiac approach right to the body. 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:39.039 Yeah. Well, put so, like water is cold, boiling water 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:43.320 is cold, ice is hot. I don't understand some of 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:46.880 it exactly right. So the upshot of it was is 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:53.080 that each humor was hot and hot or it has 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:55.919 it had a temperature and humidity, yeah, hot or cold, 0:05:55.920 --> 0:06:00.160 wet or dry, and depending on what symptoms you had, 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:04.960 you either had like a hot and wet disease, right, 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.640 or cold and dry disease. And the treatment was to 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:14.680 use the opposite. So I think pneumonia was cold and 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.720 wet because it came on during the winter, which is 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:20.279 very cold and wet around the Mediterranean at the time, 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.880 and you would treat that with something warm and dry. 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:26.160 So herbs were warm and dry. You would treat use 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.000 herbs to treat pneumonia. And the whole pursuit was just 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:34.719 to regain balance. Each person at a a pre I 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:38.520 guess ordained balance of those four humors, and when they 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.240 got out of whack, that's when you were you came 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:42.080 down with the disease. 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.719 Yeah, so you've heard about, you know, forcing yourself to 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:49.599 vomit or you know the bleeding, the old great Steve 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:52.120 Martin sketch from Saturday An five years ago. You just 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:55.280 need a good bleeding. That's what they were doing. They 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:59.320 were trying to get you back into balance by removing 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.520 whatever humor they thought, you know, either the flame or 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.520 the blood thought would you needed you had an excess 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:09.800 of at the time to bring you back into homeostasis. 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:14.040 So they were again they were wrong, but you know, 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.280 things like homeostasis, they were on the right track with 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:18.920 some of this, some of these ideas at least for sure. 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:21.160 Yeah, And that's I think kind of a recurring theme 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:23.800 in this when you look in on ancient science and 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:27.080 ancient knowledge, it's like they kind of had like the 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:29.360 contours of some of these and that's a good example 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:34.680 of that contours exactly. So it wasn't until Paracelsus, who 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:39.640 came up, I think in our Zenobiotics episode. When he 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:44.200 came along, he was definitely an outlier and an outsider thinker, 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:47.400 and he was like, I think Galen was just really wrong. 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:51.280 This stuff just doesn't quite add up. Yeah, and I 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:54.920 think William Harvey, who was an English i think physician 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:58.320 in sixteen sixteen, he shows that the heart pumps blood 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:03.680 and that just completely undermined the humoral medicine thought that 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:07.600 these these humors moved around the body through attractive forces. 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:11.040 Yeah, and you know, again, this is one of those 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:13.200 kind of what I said in the intro, like, this 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:15.080 is one of those that people believed and got on 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:18.520 board with because it made sense at the time. It 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:23.720 was something that they were very persistent about. And if 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:28.600 you're persistent about something, even if it wasn't proven at 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:32.000 the time, was that was enough for people. It was 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:35.719 the consistency of sort of the idea that's repeated over 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:38.199 and over that got people on board for a long time, 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:39.000 hundreds of years. 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:42.760 Yeah, and I think it's interesting, like the humoral medicine 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.360 is still one of the foundations of ayervedic medicine from India, 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:49.400 and that's why they think it might have come from 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:53.440 India originally to Greece. But the basis of it is 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:57.319 that you use like movement and diet to keep your 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.480 humors in balance, and that was kind of the basis 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:03.400 of the Greek interpretation too. But then they took it 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.719 too far and started using it to treat disease and 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:10.560 doing all sorts of weird stuff. So now we have 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:14.600 modern medicine, and modern medicine likes to disown its predecessors. 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:16.920 But it wouldn't be here if we didn't have things 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:18.080 like humoral medicine. 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:24.560 First up with Galen, Why not you have sneakily not 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:26.280 mentioned that this is a top five. 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:30.800 Oh that's right, it's a top five, maybe part one 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:32.480 of a top ten. Who knows. 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:35.600 Yeah, we'll see. Should we try and knock out the 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:36.400 next one? Yeah? 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:38.880 I say that. I say so, I agree, that's what 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:39.320 I say. 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:43.000 All right, this one's interesting, and this has to do 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:47.520 with Yeah, it sounds a little wacky, but again you 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:50.439 have to keep in mind where they were at the time. 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:55.400 So this is the idea put forth by How do 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:56.280 you pronounce that name? 0:09:57.120 --> 0:10:05.080 I'm going with Eoxus, Eudoxus, eudoxis, Yeah, I think eudoxis 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:05.800 all right. 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:11.400 Eudoxus of Nidos was born between three ninety five and 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:15.360 three ninety BCC, lived to kind of early to mid fifties, 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:18.600 and he came along and said, all right, I've got 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:22.199 some pretty radical things to throw out there that are fivefold. 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:25.200 Part one, the Earth is the center of the universe. 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:25.720 Check. 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:30.160 And everyone was like, sounds reasonable, And it was reasonable 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:31.800 at the time. And we'll talk about that in a second. 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:35.320 Number two, all celestial motion is circular Roger. Number three, 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.959 all celestial motion is regular. Number four, the center of 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:42.920 the path of any celestial motion is the same as 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:46.559 the center of its motion, all right. And then number five, 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.240 the center of all celestial motion is the center of 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:53.760 the universe. And I said, you know, he can't be 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:55.839 blamed for that first one, even though he was wrong 0:10:56.520 --> 0:11:00.760 about geocentrism at the time. When he stood on the 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:03.560 planet and you looked up and you saw, you know, 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:07.560 stars sort of moving and other things moving in a 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:09.800 circle around the Earth, you probably felt like you were 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:11.560 the center of the universe exactly. 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:13.240 I mean, it would just make sense. You'd be a 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:16.400 fool to think otherwise, because there's no indication that the 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:19.880 Earth itself is also moving. It seems like everything else 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:21.800 is moving around the Earth, so it's not so far 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:23.960 fetched to think that, oh, the Earth is the center 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:26.240 of the universe. Part of it also tied into that 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:30.080 natural philosophy thing where humans were the center of the universe. 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:33.640 They were like the creation of the gods, and of 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.400 course why would Earth be anything but the center of 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:39.560 the universe. But it also had to do with practical stuff, 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:41.160 like what they saw with their own eyes. 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:43.440 Yeah, Like he wasn't the first person to come up 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:45.640 with this, Like this has been around for a long 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.080 long time, and he was just sort of officially reaffirming it. 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:50.200 But he was the first person to give us a 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:57.160 model of the movement of the cosmos, celestial bodies moving 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:01.080 through the sky and trying to explain it. And somebody 0:12:01.080 --> 0:12:04.880 who came before him an aximines, I'm going with that 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:07.800 he was the first one to say, Hey, I've got it. 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.520 This is back in the sixth century VC. It shells. 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.000 Everything exists in shells, man. 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:23.520 Yeah, the idea that, like, I mean, it almost sounds 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:30.040 like he was creating little miniature galaxies and like everything 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.280 we see is contained inside its own little miniature galaxy, 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:35.160 like literally contained in a shell. 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:39.240 Yes, but all of these shells are rotating in different 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:40.640 orbits around. 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:45.160 Earth, right, but they can affect one another, right Or 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:46.200 did that come along later? 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:49.960 That came along with eudoxis so and Axemen's basically said 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:53.199 it's shells, and then Eudoxus was the first one to 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:57.880 really lay out an explanation of theory for how these 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:00.880 shells worked. And you think he came with twenty seven 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:05.360 different shells, some shells had shells within shells. It got 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.560 really kind of crazy. But the point of this isn't 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:13.080 like because Eudoxus was mad or anything like that. He 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:16.040 had to keep adding shells to explain things they saw 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:17.000 in the night sky. 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.120 Yeah, so it's almost like they dug themselves a bit 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.000 of a hole. Instead of course correcting and saying, well, 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:25.880 maybe we should look into a different theory or something, 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:29.080 they were just like kept adding shells exactly. 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:32.839 So one of the big problems was that first of all, 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:35.040 the Earth is not the center of the universe, but 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:39.679 also that the motion of celestial bodies is not circular 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:40.760 and it's not regular. 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:42.520 It's everything. 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:46.079 He was basically wrong, yeah, on all five of those points. 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:50.960 But the reason that they that he thought it was 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:53.640 circular was that circles were perfect. And again, the Earth 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:55.680 was the center of the universe and it was created 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:57.920 by the gods, so of course it was perfect. But 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:00.360 other people have pointed out that it had to be 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:03.360 circular if he was going to apply math, because non 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:09.200 circular math for movement hadn't really been created yet. Yeah, 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:11.360 that's basically that's all he had to work with was 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:14.160 circular motion. So if he was going to actually investigate 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:16.400 this and try to figure it out with math, he 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.480 had to be circular. So just by what he had 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.240 available at the time, that's why this motion was supposedly circular. 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:27.640 But that was a huge boondoggle because it's not circular, 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.680 as we found out finally from Kepler, who came along 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:33.960 and I think the seventeenth century, so again this is 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:37.680 like two thousand years. People are like, shells is where 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:41.440 it's at. Even Copernicus, who said he was the first 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:44.280 one to really say the Sun is at the center 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:46.120 of the universe, and what he was talking about was 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:48.880 the solar system and he created a revolution with that. 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:51.920 He still was saying, but it's all within shells. 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:54.480 It's just everyone's like, that makes a lot more sense. 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:56.160 And then he brings up. 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:59.200 The shells exactly. So Copernicus lays it out and then 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.000 Kepler comes on. I was like, there's no shells, and 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.200 these orbits aren't circular. They're elliptical and he ended up 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:07.560 playing the groundwork for astrophysics to come. 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:11.120 Yeah, you know, it's so easy now that we have 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:16.720 telescopes and beyond, Like, it's hard to even put your 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:19.520 mind in a framework of the only thing you have 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:22.440 is standing on the earth and looking at something with 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.320 your eyeballs and trying to take a guess at what's 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:26.080 happening out there. 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:28.840 Yeah, And I think that's what gets lost too, is 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:31.320 when we look back and like poke fun at our 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:35.040 ancient predecessors for being so dumb that, like they were 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.560 really trying to figure this out with what they had 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:41.080 available at the time. And even if it does seem wacky, 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.880 it's like, can you explain how atoms come together to 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:45.600 form a rock? 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:51.280 I can't. That's a good teaser, you know, Yeah, yeah, 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:53.320 I think it's easy to poke fun of now. But 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:58.400 the other alternative is they didn't even try, And as 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:01.200 we see time and time again, a lot of the 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:03.520 stuff that they came up with at least led to 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:05.320 the next thing and the next thing, and that's what 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:09.720 science is. So like, hats my toga is off to them. 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:11.000 You took your toga off. 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:17.400 Oh wait a minute, my grapevine atop my head is off, 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.400 you get all right? My toga is back on? 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.440 Okay, because I was gonna say, they're like a helicopter 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.120 won't be invented for one thousand plus years. 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:29.160 All right, I think we should take a break now 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:33.560 and we will talk about the idea that the Earth 0:16:33.960 --> 0:17:05.120 is rotating around to central fire right after this, all right, 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:09.199 I promise talk of wackiness before we left, about the 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:13.600 idea that the Earth circled a central fire capital C, 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:18.199 capital F like the big fire. And this was a 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:25.080 thing Pythagoraeans, which are the people, the group that you know, 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:28.320 followed in the footsteps of Pythagoras himself in the sixth century. 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:33.200 They thought that the Earth circled a big central fire, 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.680 and not only the Earth, but basically everything, all the planets, 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:39.639 all the stars, the sun, and the moon, everything circled 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:42.840 around a central fire, and that there was also a 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:46.200 counter earth, like another earth. And I don't know how 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:46.880 you pronounce that. 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:51.280 And titch than I think it's a tickthon and tickthon. Yeah, 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:53.320 it's a really odd word. 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.120 It is. It's not capitalized, which makes me feel weird. 0:17:57.200 --> 0:17:59.439 Yeah, it seems fishy, but that's the name of a 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.840 counter that's either in the same orbit or in its 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:07.520 own orbit, but always opposite the Sun from Earth. Right right, 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:09.560 This wasn't something where they were pointing up in it 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:12.840 was Mars, unless they called Mars. This is a hypothetical 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:15.320 planet that they were saying was out there, we just 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:17.800 can't see it. And then also with the Central Fire, 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:20.320 they're not saying that was the Sun. The Sun had 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:23.679 its own orbit around the central Fire. Yeah, and the 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.439 Central Fire was unseen because Greece always revolved in a 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:30.280 way or the Earth always revolved in a way that 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.520 Greece was opposite the Central Fire, so it could never 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:33.879 see it. 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:38.040 Yeah. So there was this guy Philileus. 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:39.480 Probably I think that's exactly right. 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:44.120 Of Croton, which sounds like a planet that would circle 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:44.520 of fire. 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:46.960 Take me to your leader, I am Croton. 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:50.960 But Croton was actually in southern Italy, and he was 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.359 another Greek philosopher, scientist. There were a lot of those guys, 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:59.040 and he was hanging around with Socrates. He was a 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:03.199 pretty prominent Pythagorean. Oh yeah, and he was one of 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:08.040 these guys that put forth this uh you know, this idea. 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:11.880 Even though like they moved away from geocentrism, which is great, 0:19:12.160 --> 0:19:15.480 but instead of moving directly into heliocentrism, they moved to 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:16.639 the central fire thing. 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:21.880 First, central fireism. Yeah, so yeah, he basically said, there's 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:26.520 a central fire, everything orbits around the central fire, and 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:29.680 the all of the orbits are circular. They love circular orbits, 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:33.840 and that the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and the 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:37.320 five planets each had their own orbit. And there was 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:41.919 that counter Earth too, bizarro Earth and Tikman that was 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:46.600 opposite Earth at all times. That made ten ten orbits 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:49.159 all together. And there are a couple of reasons for that. 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:52.040 One is that to the Pythagoreans, ten was a perfect number, 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:56.040 So of course there were ten orbits, but also it 0:19:56.200 --> 0:20:01.560 explained having that counter Earth, that tenth orbit explained lunar eclipses, 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:04.160 because then that meant that that was just a tick 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:06.200 thin shadow being cast on the Moon. 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:11.560 Yeah. Also to in defense of these sort of wild ideas, 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:16.119 they did have the idea that these orbits they varied 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:18.439 quite a bit in how long they took. The Earth's 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.119 took twenty four hours, the Sun's took a year, the 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:23.720 Moon's took a month, And you know, they were on 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:26.800 a right track at that point, as far as lunar 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:30.840 orbits and Earth's orbits in the Sun and things like that, 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.320 because they all do take different amounts of time, and 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:36.840 they were pretty on track with the Earth taking twenty 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:40.600 four hours, except the way they describe it was I 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:43.520 think it was more that not the Earth is spinning 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:46.600 on its axis as at orbits the Sun, but more 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:50.760 like we're really circulating the central fire a lot faster 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:53.400 than the Sun, and we lap the Sun every twenty 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:55.640 four hours, and that's how we have day and night. 0:20:55.760 --> 0:20:59.199 It's just so wrong, and you can understand. It's so 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:03.280 fascinating that they had that data, they had that information available, 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:06.119 and they just went the exact wrong direction with it. 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:08.840 But again, this is just what this is what they 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:11.200 had available to them at the time. I find that 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:15.680 fascinating that that's how they explained it. It's pretty cool. 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:20.240 So in this IFL science article I found they basically said, 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:24.320 it's actually possible, hypothetically for a counter Earth to exist 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:28.200 in the same orbit as Earth, but always opposite Earth, 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:31.520 like traveling at the same rate. We've discovered extra solar 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:36.320 planets that have that same arrangement, so it's possible, but 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:39.600 it's impossible that there actually is a counter Earth, because 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:42.920 we've run models on it, our astrophysicists have, I should say, 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:46.960 you and I haven't, and it would It would affect 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:51.160 other planets, even just a small counter Earth would affect 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:56.080 other planets orbits very noticeably. It's starting with Venus, and 0:21:56.359 --> 0:21:59.640 Venus's orbit is not being affected by any mysterious object, 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:01.320 so there is no counter Earth. 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:04.879 That turns out, that's right, I'm sure. Jim Morrison was 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:08.240 very disappointed to hear that the Central Fire went away. 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:11.280 This all reminded me of like a door song. 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:13.159 Central fire, Yeah, for sure. 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:16.520 You know, everything revolving around a central fire, a counter earth. 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:20.520 Yeah, yeah, it does kind of seem doors ish, also 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:21.480 pink floidy. 0:22:22.320 --> 0:22:24.560 Yeah that's true, because the doors didn't get super spacey 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:25.960 as like literal space. 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:29.920 No, but he a central fire sounds, Jim Morrison, the 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:32.480 counter Earth sounds sounds pink floydy. 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:33.960 Yeah, you're right. 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:36.160 Okay, I'm glad we finally settled. 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:39.160 All right, what do we get next? 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:42.240 So another one that I think a lot of people 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:46.000 are familiar with is the four elements like earth, air, 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:49.760 wind fire, earth wind fire and air. 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:54.320 Great band. Okay, screws it all up. Feature air another 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:56.600 great band. Air should open for earth, wind, and fire. 0:22:56.600 --> 0:23:01.040