Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Speaker 2: should Know, the Let's get Jiggy with Science edition. You
Speaker 2: know you're about to get jiggy Chuck with it, Yeah.
Speaker 1: With it.
Speaker 2: And it is this episode about what people believe before
Speaker 2: the scientific method.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we have a pretty good episode on
Speaker 1: the scientific method. And we have talked about some of
Speaker 1: this stuff here and there throughout the years, like you know,
Speaker 1: early science, and it's easy to make fun of that stuff, right,
Speaker 1: but we are here not to make fun of it
Speaker 1: and not necessarily to defend it, but to just put
Speaker 1: it into perspective of where these people were at the time.
Speaker 1: And you can see how long of this stuff made
Speaker 1: sense at the time.
Speaker 2: See that was as jiggy as it comes, all right,
Speaker 2: see you later. Yeah, that was really well put and
Speaker 2: just as a refresher real quick. So you don't have
Speaker 2: to pause and go back and listen to our scientific
Speaker 2: method episode. You can if you want, but if you
Speaker 2: don't feel like doing that, the scientific method is just
Speaker 2: basically a plan to keep yourself from going down blind
Speaker 2: alleys or being misled by what seems to be the
Speaker 2: case but isn't necessarily the case. Sometimes your own eyes
Speaker 2: can lie to you, and it basically says is like,
Speaker 2: based on you know, data you've collected or things you've observed,
Speaker 2: form a hypothesis like this happens because of this, figure
Speaker 2: out how to test it, test it, look at the results.
Speaker 2: Did it support the hypothesis, did it not support the hypothesis,
Speaker 2: and either keep going forward or go back to square one.
Speaker 2: And by testing it, that's where the scientific method really shines.
Speaker 2: And before the scientific method, people didn't do that. They
Speaker 2: used their eyes, the empiricists, they formed theories, the rationalists
Speaker 2: or dogmatists, they performed experiments, the methodists, that's really what
Speaker 2: they called them. But they didn't actually like test this stuff,
Speaker 2: and so they were able to create these theories that
Speaker 2: were totally wrong. Sometimes we're really right, but in a
Speaker 2: lot of cases we're really wrong. And that those things
Speaker 2: were adopted for like thousands of years in some cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because a lot of science was mixed up with
Speaker 1: philosophy for a long long time. And as you'll see
Speaker 1: with some of these like if you had a good
Speaker 1: enough sort of philosophical thought about something and other people said, hey,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, and you kept repeating it a lot.
Speaker 1: Then at the time people were like, well that's good
Speaker 1: enough for.
Speaker 2: Us, Yeah, which meant also if philosophy was in there,
Speaker 2: you had to also had to explain why more than
Speaker 2: be reliably consistent in its results.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So.
Speaker 2: One of the first ones that I think people think
Speaker 2: of when they think of ancient science as the Four
Speaker 2: Humors humors of medicine, which was something that came along
Speaker 2: from Hippocrates all the way back in I think the
Speaker 2: fourth or fifth century BCE and was in place until
Speaker 2: the sixteen hundreds. Essentially that was how people practice medicine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's a long run. Hippocrates probably did
Speaker 1: not make it up himself. It's theorized that he probably
Speaker 1: brought it over or he didn't necessarily, but it was
Speaker 1: brought over to the Greeks, maybe from India, maybe from Egypt.
Speaker 1: But Hippocrates ran with it, and then Galen really ran
Speaker 1: with it. And Galen is who is probably most people
Speaker 1: think of Galen when they think of the humors, the
Speaker 1: four humors, right, but humore h m R is Latin
Speaker 1: meaning fluid. And that's basically what they're talking about with
Speaker 1: the four humors. Almost at humids, the four humors, which
Speaker 1: are the fluids of the body, and we should just
Speaker 1: name them quickly, I think, yeah, fl flim you got blood,
Speaker 1: and then you got the two biles. You got black
Speaker 1: bile and yellow bile.
Speaker 2: Right, And those things are not just the sum total
Speaker 2: of what was studied or what was responsible for ill
Speaker 2: health or for health. They almost stood in for a
Speaker 2: bunch of other things too, Like your energy could be
Speaker 2: low or angry or overly happy, and all those were
Speaker 2: associated with different humors, right. So I think it was
Speaker 2: Palamar University website on it basically put it like more
Speaker 2: than just fluids themselves. You could think of the humors
Speaker 2: as those things that flow fluids, energy, that kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and all these humors also had complexions. They had they
Speaker 2: were either wet or dry, cold or hot, and there
Speaker 2: were combinations.
Speaker 1: Of those but not And it's not literally that no,
Speaker 1: a little confusing, it's super duper confusing.
Speaker 2: And I think this is an example of what happens
Speaker 2: when people over a couple thousand years kind of contribute
Speaker 2: to stuff. It gets a little off kilter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like blood is hot and wet, But that didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean they're saying that when you touch blood it
Speaker 1: was hot to the touch, right. It's almost like what
Speaker 1: a synesthesiac approach right to the body.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, put so, like water is cold, boiling water
Speaker 2: is cold, ice is hot. I don't understand some of
Speaker 2: it exactly right. So the upshot of it was is
Speaker 2: that each humor was hot and hot or it has
Speaker 2: it had a temperature and humidity, yeah, hot or cold,
Speaker 2: wet or dry, and depending on what symptoms you had,
Speaker 2: you either had like a hot and wet disease, right,
Speaker 2: or cold and dry disease. And the treatment was to
Speaker 2: use the opposite. So I think pneumonia was cold and
Speaker 2: wet because it came on during the winter, which is
Speaker 2: very cold and wet around the Mediterranean at the time,
Speaker 2: and you would treat that with something warm and dry.
Speaker 2: So herbs were warm and dry. You would treat use
Speaker 2: herbs to treat pneumonia. And the whole pursuit was just
Speaker 2: to regain balance. Each person at a a pre I
Speaker 2: guess ordained balance of those four humors, and when they
Speaker 2: got out of whack, that's when you were you came
Speaker 2: down with the disease.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you've heard about, you know, forcing yourself to
Speaker 1: vomit or you know the bleeding, the old great Steve
Speaker 1: Martin sketch from Saturday An five years ago. You just
Speaker 1: need a good bleeding. That's what they were doing. They
Speaker 1: were trying to get you back into balance by removing
Speaker 1: whatever humor they thought, you know, either the flame or
Speaker 1: the blood thought would you needed you had an excess
Speaker 1: of at the time to bring you back into homeostasis.
Speaker 1: So they were again they were wrong, but you know,
Speaker 1: things like homeostasis, they were on the right track with
Speaker 1: some of this, some of these ideas at least for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's I think kind of a recurring theme
Speaker 2: in this when you look in on ancient science and
Speaker 2: ancient knowledge, it's like they kind of had like the
Speaker 2: contours of some of these and that's a good example
Speaker 2: of that contours exactly. So it wasn't until Paracelsus, who
Speaker 2: came up, I think in our Zenobiotics episode. When he
Speaker 2: came along, he was definitely an outlier and an outsider thinker,
Speaker 2: and he was like, I think Galen was just really wrong.
Speaker 2: This stuff just doesn't quite add up. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: think William Harvey, who was an English i think physician
Speaker 2: in sixteen sixteen, he shows that the heart pumps blood
Speaker 2: and that just completely undermined the humoral medicine thought that
Speaker 2: these these humors moved around the body through attractive forces.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, again, this is one of those
Speaker 1: kind of what I said in the intro, like, this
Speaker 1: is one of those that people believed and got on
Speaker 1: board with because it made sense at the time. It
Speaker 1: was something that they were very persistent about. And if
Speaker 1: you're persistent about something, even if it wasn't proven at
Speaker 1: the time, was that was enough for people. It was
Speaker 1: the consistency of sort of the idea that's repeated over
Speaker 1: and over that got people on board for a long time,
Speaker 1: hundreds of years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's interesting, like the humoral medicine
Speaker 2: is still one of the foundations of ayervedic medicine from India,
Speaker 2: and that's why they think it might have come from
Speaker 2: India originally to Greece. But the basis of it is
Speaker 2: that you use like movement and diet to keep your
Speaker 2: humors in balance, and that was kind of the basis
Speaker 2: of the Greek interpretation too. But then they took it
Speaker 2: too far and started using it to treat disease and
Speaker 2: doing all sorts of weird stuff. So now we have
Speaker 2: modern medicine, and modern medicine likes to disown its predecessors.
Speaker 2: But it wouldn't be here if we didn't have things
Speaker 2: like humoral medicine.
Speaker 1: First up with Galen, Why not you have sneakily not
Speaker 1: mentioned that this is a top five.
Speaker 2: Oh that's right, it's a top five, maybe part one
Speaker 2: of a top ten. Who knows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see. Should we try and knock out the
Speaker 1: next one? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I say that. I say so, I agree, that's what
Speaker 2: I say.
Speaker 1: All right, this one's interesting, and this has to do
Speaker 1: with Yeah, it sounds a little wacky, but again you
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind where they were at the time.
Speaker 1: So this is the idea put forth by How do
Speaker 1: you pronounce that name?
Speaker 2: I'm going with Eoxus, Eudoxus, eudoxis, Yeah, I think eudoxis
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: Eudoxus of Nidos was born between three ninety five and
Speaker 1: three ninety BCC, lived to kind of early to mid fifties,
Speaker 1: and he came along and said, all right, I've got
Speaker 1: some pretty radical things to throw out there that are fivefold.
Speaker 1: Part one, the Earth is the center of the universe.
Speaker 2: Check.
Speaker 1: And everyone was like, sounds reasonable, And it was reasonable
Speaker 1: at the time. And we'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker 1: Number two, all celestial motion is circular Roger. Number three,
Speaker 1: all celestial motion is regular. Number four, the center of
Speaker 1: the path of any celestial motion is the same as
Speaker 1: the center of its motion, all right. And then number five,
Speaker 1: the center of all celestial motion is the center of
Speaker 1: the universe. And I said, you know, he can't be
Speaker 1: blamed for that first one, even though he was wrong
Speaker 1: about geocentrism at the time. When he stood on the
Speaker 1: planet and you looked up and you saw, you know,
Speaker 1: stars sort of moving and other things moving in a
Speaker 1: circle around the Earth, you probably felt like you were
Speaker 1: the center of the universe exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, it would just make sense. You'd be a
Speaker 2: fool to think otherwise, because there's no indication that the
Speaker 2: Earth itself is also moving. It seems like everything else
Speaker 2: is moving around the Earth, so it's not so far
Speaker 2: fetched to think that, oh, the Earth is the center
Speaker 2: of the universe. Part of it also tied into that
Speaker 2: natural philosophy thing where humans were the center of the universe.
Speaker 2: They were like the creation of the gods, and of
Speaker 2: course why would Earth be anything but the center of
Speaker 2: the universe. But it also had to do with practical stuff,
Speaker 2: like what they saw with their own eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like he wasn't the first person to come up
Speaker 1: with this, Like this has been around for a long
Speaker 1: long time, and he was just sort of officially reaffirming it.
Speaker 2: But he was the first person to give us a
Speaker 2: model of the movement of the cosmos, celestial bodies moving
Speaker 2: through the sky and trying to explain it. And somebody
Speaker 2: who came before him an aximines, I'm going with that
Speaker 2: he was the first one to say, Hey, I've got it.
Speaker 2: This is back in the sixth century VC. It shells.
Speaker 2: Everything exists in shells, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea that, like, I mean, it almost sounds
Speaker 1: like he was creating little miniature galaxies and like everything
Speaker 1: we see is contained inside its own little miniature galaxy,
Speaker 1: like literally contained in a shell.
Speaker 2: Yes, but all of these shells are rotating in different
Speaker 2: orbits around.
Speaker 1: Earth, right, but they can affect one another, right Or
Speaker 1: did that come along later?
Speaker 2: That came along with eudoxis so and Axemen's basically said
Speaker 2: it's shells, and then Eudoxus was the first one to
Speaker 2: really lay out an explanation of theory for how these
Speaker 2: shells worked. And you think he came with twenty seven
Speaker 2: different shells, some shells had shells within shells. It got
Speaker 2: really kind of crazy. But the point of this isn't
Speaker 2: like because Eudoxus was mad or anything like that. He
Speaker 2: had to keep adding shells to explain things they saw
Speaker 2: in the night sky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's almost like they dug themselves a bit
Speaker 1: of a hole. Instead of course correcting and saying, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should look into a different theory or something,
Speaker 1: they were just like kept adding shells exactly.
Speaker 2: So one of the big problems was that first of all,
Speaker 2: the Earth is not the center of the universe, but
Speaker 2: also that the motion of celestial bodies is not circular
Speaker 2: and it's not regular.
Speaker 1: It's everything.
Speaker 2: He was basically wrong, yeah, on all five of those points.
Speaker 2: But the reason that they that he thought it was
Speaker 2: circular was that circles were perfect. And again, the Earth
Speaker 2: was the center of the universe and it was created
Speaker 2: by the gods, so of course it was perfect. But
Speaker 2: other people have pointed out that it had to be
Speaker 2: circular if he was going to apply math, because non
Speaker 2: circular math for movement hadn't really been created yet. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's basically that's all he had to work with was
Speaker 2: circular motion. So if he was going to actually investigate
Speaker 2: this and try to figure it out with math, he
Speaker 2: had to be circular. So just by what he had
Speaker 2: available at the time, that's why this motion was supposedly circular.
Speaker 2: But that was a huge boondoggle because it's not circular,
Speaker 2: as we found out finally from Kepler, who came along
Speaker 2: and I think the seventeenth century, so again this is
Speaker 2: like two thousand years. People are like, shells is where
Speaker 2: it's at. Even Copernicus, who said he was the first
Speaker 2: one to really say the Sun is at the center
Speaker 2: of the universe, and what he was talking about was
Speaker 2: the solar system and he created a revolution with that.
Speaker 2: He still was saying, but it's all within shells.
Speaker 1: It's just everyone's like, that makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 1: And then he brings up.
Speaker 2: The shells exactly. So Copernicus lays it out and then
Speaker 2: Kepler comes on. I was like, there's no shells, and
Speaker 2: these orbits aren't circular. They're elliptical and he ended up
Speaker 2: playing the groundwork for astrophysics to come.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's so easy now that we have
Speaker 1: telescopes and beyond, Like, it's hard to even put your
Speaker 1: mind in a framework of the only thing you have
Speaker 1: is standing on the earth and looking at something with
Speaker 1: your eyeballs and trying to take a guess at what's
Speaker 1: happening out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's what gets lost too, is
Speaker 2: when we look back and like poke fun at our
Speaker 2: ancient predecessors for being so dumb that, like they were
Speaker 2: really trying to figure this out with what they had
Speaker 2: available at the time. And even if it does seem wacky,
Speaker 2: it's like, can you explain how atoms come together to
Speaker 2: form a rock?
Speaker 1: I can't. That's a good teaser, you know, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's easy to poke fun of now. But
Speaker 1: the other alternative is they didn't even try, And as
Speaker 1: we see time and time again, a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff that they came up with at least led to
Speaker 1: the next thing and the next thing, and that's what
Speaker 1: science is. So like, hats my toga is off to them.
Speaker 2: You took your toga off.
Speaker 1: Oh wait a minute, my grapevine atop my head is off,
Speaker 1: you get all right? My toga is back on?
Speaker 2: Okay, because I was gonna say, they're like a helicopter
Speaker 2: won't be invented for one thousand plus years.
Speaker 1: All right, I think we should take a break now
Speaker 1: and we will talk about the idea that the Earth
Speaker 1: is rotating around to central fire right after this, all right,
Speaker 1: I promise talk of wackiness before we left, about the
Speaker 1: idea that the Earth circled a central fire capital C,
Speaker 1: capital F like the big fire. And this was a
Speaker 1: thing Pythagoraeans, which are the people, the group that you know,
Speaker 1: followed in the footsteps of Pythagoras himself in the sixth century.
Speaker 1: They thought that the Earth circled a big central fire,
Speaker 1: and not only the Earth, but basically everything, all the planets,
Speaker 1: all the stars, the sun, and the moon, everything circled
Speaker 1: around a central fire, and that there was also a
Speaker 1: counter earth, like another earth. And I don't know how
Speaker 1: you pronounce that.
Speaker 2: And titch than I think it's a tickthon and tickthon. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a really odd word.
Speaker 1: It is. It's not capitalized, which makes me feel weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems fishy, but that's the name of a
Speaker 2: counter that's either in the same orbit or in its
Speaker 2: own orbit, but always opposite the Sun from Earth. Right right,
Speaker 2: This wasn't something where they were pointing up in it
Speaker 2: was Mars, unless they called Mars. This is a hypothetical
Speaker 2: planet that they were saying was out there, we just
Speaker 2: can't see it. And then also with the Central Fire,
Speaker 2: they're not saying that was the Sun. The Sun had
Speaker 2: its own orbit around the central Fire. Yeah, and the
Speaker 2: Central Fire was unseen because Greece always revolved in a
Speaker 2: way or the Earth always revolved in a way that
Speaker 2: Greece was opposite the Central Fire, so it could never
Speaker 2: see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there was this guy Philileus.
Speaker 2: Probably I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Of Croton, which sounds like a planet that would circle
Speaker 1: of fire.
Speaker 2: Take me to your leader, I am Croton.
Speaker 1: But Croton was actually in southern Italy, and he was
Speaker 1: another Greek philosopher, scientist. There were a lot of those guys,
Speaker 1: and he was hanging around with Socrates. He was a
Speaker 1: pretty prominent Pythagorean. Oh yeah, and he was one of
Speaker 1: these guys that put forth this uh you know, this idea.
Speaker 1: Even though like they moved away from geocentrism, which is great,
Speaker 1: but instead of moving directly into heliocentrism, they moved to
Speaker 1: the central fire thing.
Speaker 2: First, central fireism. Yeah, so yeah, he basically said, there's
Speaker 2: a central fire, everything orbits around the central fire, and
Speaker 2: the all of the orbits are circular. They love circular orbits,
Speaker 2: and that the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and the
Speaker 2: five planets each had their own orbit. And there was
Speaker 2: that counter Earth too, bizarro Earth and Tikman that was
Speaker 2: opposite Earth at all times. That made ten ten orbits
Speaker 2: all together. And there are a couple of reasons for that.
Speaker 2: One is that to the Pythagoreans, ten was a perfect number,
Speaker 2: So of course there were ten orbits, but also it
Speaker 2: explained having that counter Earth, that tenth orbit explained lunar eclipses,
Speaker 2: because then that meant that that was just a tick
Speaker 2: thin shadow being cast on the Moon.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also to in defense of these sort of wild ideas,
Speaker 1: they did have the idea that these orbits they varied
Speaker 1: quite a bit in how long they took. The Earth's
Speaker 1: took twenty four hours, the Sun's took a year, the
Speaker 1: Moon's took a month, And you know, they were on
Speaker 1: a right track at that point, as far as lunar
Speaker 1: orbits and Earth's orbits in the Sun and things like that,
Speaker 1: because they all do take different amounts of time, and
Speaker 1: they were pretty on track with the Earth taking twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, except the way they describe it was I
Speaker 1: think it was more that not the Earth is spinning
Speaker 1: on its axis as at orbits the Sun, but more
Speaker 1: like we're really circulating the central fire a lot faster
Speaker 1: than the Sun, and we lap the Sun every twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, and that's how we have day and night.
Speaker 2: It's just so wrong, and you can understand. It's so
Speaker 2: fascinating that they had that data, they had that information available,
Speaker 2: and they just went the exact wrong direction with it.
Speaker 2: But again, this is just what this is what they
Speaker 2: had available to them at the time. I find that
Speaker 2: fascinating that that's how they explained it. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: So in this IFL science article I found they basically said,
Speaker 2: it's actually possible, hypothetically for a counter Earth to exist
Speaker 2: in the same orbit as Earth, but always opposite Earth,
Speaker 2: like traveling at the same rate. We've discovered extra solar
Speaker 2: planets that have that same arrangement, so it's possible, but
Speaker 2: it's impossible that there actually is a counter Earth, because
Speaker 2: we've run models on it, our astrophysicists have, I should say,
Speaker 2: you and I haven't, and it would It would affect
Speaker 2: other planets, even just a small counter Earth would affect
Speaker 2: other planets orbits very noticeably. It's starting with Venus, and
Speaker 2: Venus's orbit is not being affected by any mysterious object,
Speaker 2: so there is no counter Earth.
Speaker 1: That turns out, that's right, I'm sure. Jim Morrison was
Speaker 1: very disappointed to hear that the Central Fire went away.
Speaker 1: This all reminded me of like a door song.
Speaker 2: Central fire, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: You know, everything revolving around a central fire, a counter earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it does kind of seem doors ish, also
Speaker 2: pink floidy.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's true, because the doors didn't get super spacey
Speaker 1: as like literal space.
Speaker 2: No, but he a central fire sounds, Jim Morrison, the
Speaker 2: counter Earth sounds sounds pink floydy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm glad we finally settled.
Speaker 1: All right, what do we get next?
Speaker 2: So another one that I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: are familiar with is the four elements like earth, air,
Speaker 2: wind fire, earth wind fire and air.
Speaker 1: Great band. Okay, screws it all up. Feature air another
Speaker 1: great band. Air should open for earth, wind, and fire.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and those that that whole idea it dates back to,
Speaker 2: like the humoral sense of medicine as well. This was
Speaker 2: something that was found in I think the sixth century BCE,
Speaker 2: and that an x Menes, the guy who also said
Speaker 2: it's shells, also was like, it's air.
Speaker 1: I love this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really was out there, but he like he
Speaker 2: lives in a van down by the river, but he
Speaker 2: was very well regarded.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean a lot of people were sort
Speaker 1: of thinking at the time that things were all made
Speaker 1: from a single thing, none of no one could get
Speaker 1: together and agree on what that single thing might be.
Speaker 1: But like you said, for what was it an x Andes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so he was all about the air, and
Speaker 1: Plato came along and then later said, actually we've got earth, fire, water,
Speaker 1: and air, and Aristotle said, don't forget about the ether.
Speaker 1: They're like all right, yeah, fine.
Speaker 2: That's something that comes up a lot when you start
Speaker 2: researching ancient knowledge. Aristotle in particular was the guy everyone
Speaker 2: looked at for a thumbs up or thumbs down and
Speaker 2: knowledge at the time, and just him giving a thumbs
Speaker 2: up would mean that people would keep doing it for
Speaker 2: two thousand years until the scientific Revolution. He was that
Speaker 2: well regarded in his time and following his time as well,
Speaker 2: so he definitely was like, yes, I'm totally down with
Speaker 2: the whole earth, air, fire, water, and ether idea that
Speaker 2: everything is made of that and that everything is touching
Speaker 2: everything else. So like the space between you and me
Speaker 2: filled with the air element, but not only that. It's
Speaker 2: not only like if you look at the earth, that's
Speaker 2: obviously earth element, or if you look at fire this
Speaker 2: fire element. Everything is made up of a combination of
Speaker 2: some degree of each of these elements. And there's actually
Speaker 2: method to that madness too. It wasn't just like because
Speaker 2: we know what water is, we know it eras we
Speaker 2: know what fire is and earth, that's what we're going
Speaker 2: to say everything's made up. They actually made observations that
Speaker 2: either led them to this or that really supported their
Speaker 2: ideas in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: Like for example, this is how stuff works article gives
Speaker 2: a great example. Wood was solid, which means that it
Speaker 2: had earth in it, It floated, which means that it
Speaker 2: had an air element to it, and then it.
Speaker 1: Burns a witch right, then it burned, which didn't.
Speaker 2: So part fire too. So you can see how these
Speaker 2: things kind of came together to form a log or
Speaker 2: a stone or a rabbit is another recurring theme.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so that's where we are. Then this
Speaker 1: guy Empedocles comes along. He's from Sicily, fifth century BCE,
Speaker 1: and he was one of the first people to kind
Speaker 1: of put forth the theory that, you know, maybe things
Speaker 1: are built out of things that are so small that
Speaker 1: we can't see them, right, that there are actual building blocks,
Speaker 1: we can't touch them, we can't see them or feel them.
Speaker 1: And if you look at a stone, like look at
Speaker 1: that big rock over there, that's not we call it rock,
Speaker 1: but it's not rock. It's made up of these small elements.
Speaker 1: And people went elements and he said, yes, elements. And
Speaker 1: this was a pretty like far out but on the
Speaker 1: right track way of thinking for fifth century BCE.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he was in. Pedocolis was the guy
Speaker 2: who came along and said, no, that these things are
Speaker 2: all made up of different combinations and interactions of these
Speaker 2: four elements. And he also suggested that the transformations or
Speaker 2: the creations of these things took place through an attractive
Speaker 2: force known as love.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I love that part.
Speaker 2: That that was the combiner, the creator force. So if
Speaker 2: you step back and think about epidocolis, he's just introduced
Speaker 2: the idea that there are elements. There are elements, it's
Speaker 2: just the earth, air, fire, wind, and water. And he
Speaker 2: also introduced the idea of attractive horses that bring elements together.
Speaker 2: And it's not love. Maybe it's or like electro magnetism
Speaker 2: or the nuclear force something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, boy, talk about Jim Morrison. He would have
Speaker 1: been all over this episode totally. I think it would
Speaker 1: have been a big stuff. You should know, fan, Do
Speaker 1: you think so?
Speaker 2: I could see him really just talking smack about us
Speaker 2: for no good reason on the internet.
Speaker 1: I mean, how old would he be today? He died
Speaker 1: at it's a twenty seven clubber, and he died in
Speaker 1: what the seventies, so I.
Speaker 2: Would say probably forty eight. Let's say he was born
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty eight, so seventy five he'd be something
Speaker 2: that's perfect age to complain on the internet these days.
Speaker 1: I remember I remember seeing a phony gap ad this
Speaker 1: is a long time ago, where they showed like an
Speaker 1: aged Jim Morrison in like gap jeans or something what
Speaker 1: And they did a really good job with it, and
Speaker 1: it looked like totally like what you could picture him
Speaker 1: looking like.
Speaker 2: Are you sure you didn't just dream that?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. I also saw the thing recently where
Speaker 1: they use AI to create like what would they look
Speaker 1: like now kind of things? Uh huh. For a lot
Speaker 1: of people who died young, and some of them were
Speaker 1: pretty good, and some of them, like Elvis's was just
Speaker 1: like you just basically gussied up Vernon Presley his dad.
Speaker 1: Oh really, it was like obviously his dad lazy AI. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some of them were okay. Some of them were pretty dumb.
Speaker 2: Well, like Coo, who was one that was okay that
Speaker 2: you saw?
Speaker 1: Uh oh boy, I'm trying to remember. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't have to go look that up. I always
Speaker 2: forget to look up the stuff you talk about on
Speaker 2: the episodes because the moment we're done, it just vanishes.
Speaker 2: You stop existing.
Speaker 1: That's great, that's a secret to our longevity. That's right.
Speaker 2: We just both stop existing in the other's minds until
Speaker 2: the next time.
Speaker 1: All right, So where are we we are? Democritis Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Democritis then comes along, Yeah, and he's like all right,
Speaker 1: I got this new theory because there were some problems
Speaker 1: with what Empedocles was talking about. First of all, he
Speaker 1: has offered no evidence. I don't know if anyone noticed
Speaker 1: that at all. And second of all, you take that
Speaker 1: rock o it there, and he said, it's made up.
Speaker 1: You know, if you break it up, it's made up
Speaker 1: of smaller things. But if you keep breaking that thing up,
Speaker 1: you're never gonna get down to fire, no matter how
Speaker 1: small you break that thing up.
Speaker 2: Right, So he came up with this idea that you
Speaker 2: could break something down to finally its most basic unit,
Speaker 2: an indivisible unit that he called atomos, which is Latin
Speaker 2: or Greek for atoms. Yeah, this guy came up with
Speaker 2: the idea of atoms, which he not only said were
Speaker 2: the indivisible base units of everything everything, he also said
Speaker 2: that they were indestructible and eternal. And then he also
Speaker 2: said that they exist in free space around us what
Speaker 2: you would call today a vacuum. So this guy basically
Speaker 2: predicted atomic theory a couple of thousand years ago, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's known as the best guess in antiquity. He
Speaker 2: got it so close. Where he went astray is that
Speaker 2: he said that when you broke down a rock, you
Speaker 2: would get to the rock atom, and that was it.
Speaker 2: Like what you saw a rock, a rabbit something like that,
Speaker 2: you you would if you broke it down to its
Speaker 2: constituent part, like its base atom. It was a rabbit atam,
Speaker 2: or a rock atom, or a log atom or a
Speaker 2: chuck adam the things. The thing it was, it was
Speaker 2: like that specific kind of atom rather than a combination
Speaker 2: of just a few types of atoms that can make anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which you know you did pretty get up into
Speaker 1: that point. For sure, you did very good. I would
Speaker 1: dare say excellent up into that point.
Speaker 2: Would you take your toge off for him?
Speaker 1: I'd flash it, okay, but you know, with permission, of course, sure,
Speaker 1: I would say. You know, it's like, do you mind
Speaker 1: if I lift my togad.
Speaker 2: And he could.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you added that. So you know, everyone of
Speaker 1: course wanted to know what Aristotle and Plato thought, even
Speaker 1: you know at the time, or especially at the time,
Speaker 1: and they both basically rejected these ideas. Aristotle sort of
Speaker 1: accepted it, but he said, well, also, there are those
Speaker 1: four core elements, but they can be transformed into one another.
Speaker 1: And everyone was like oh God, here he goes again, Like,
Speaker 1: now we have to start thinking that because Aristotle said
Speaker 1: it exactly.
Speaker 2: He threw his lot in with the four elements, in
Speaker 2: part because he totally rejected Democritis's assertion that there was
Speaker 2: such a thing as Adams moving in a void in
Speaker 2: free space. He said, there's no such thing as a void.
Speaker 2: Everything around us is connected. Like the stuff that just
Speaker 2: looks like space between you and me, that's the air
Speaker 2: element filling that up. Like there's nothing that's not connected.
Speaker 2: And because he just would not accept the idea of
Speaker 2: a vacuum, he gave the thumbs up to Empedoclea's idea
Speaker 2: with the elements thumbs down to Democritis. So Democritis is
Speaker 2: incredibly accurate. Prediction would have to wait about two thousand
Speaker 2: years before people finally came around and were like, oh,
Speaker 2: Democritis was super right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And that's in sixteen forty three, Evangelista Torricelli
Speaker 1: came along. Linda Evan, that's right, an Italian mathematician this
Speaker 1: time studying under Galileo came along and showed that air
Speaker 1: and I believe he was he the first person to
Speaker 1: create a vacuum in an experiment like this. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's a pretty key part here. But in a vacuum
Speaker 1: showed that air had weight, like this thing that we
Speaker 1: can't see or well sometimes you can smell it, I guess,
Speaker 1: but you can't see it or feel it or anything
Speaker 1: like that. But it was still capable of pushing down
Speaker 1: liquid mercury, which is also how we got the barometer,
Speaker 1: by the way, and everyone was like it rocked everyone's
Speaker 1: world basically, like we can't feel it, we can't see it,
Speaker 1: but it has weight, so it's got to be made
Speaker 1: of something, and so what's it made of?
Speaker 2: Right? So how can an element be made of something else?
Speaker 2: I guess is the point of that. And then even
Speaker 2: more to the point, Torricelli, by creating the first experimental vacuum,
Speaker 2: proved that Democratis's assertion that there is a vacuum, his predictions,
Speaker 2: part of his atomic theory was right. So that was
Speaker 2: what really led to the investigation into atomic theory, which
Speaker 2: is finally I think put forth in I think eighteen
Speaker 2: oh three maybe by John Dalton.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: It really is amazing that he got that close, Like
Speaker 2: imagine just and again he's guessing. He had no way
Speaker 2: of testing any of this, but it was a really
Speaker 2: good guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very very smart, forward thinking guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll bet he was a heck of a discus thrower. Two.
Speaker 1: Al right, well, we're going to take our final break
Speaker 1: and we're going to come back and talk about our
Speaker 1: final topic, number one, spontaneous generation.
Speaker 2: All right, chuck. So there's a well worn trope that
Speaker 2: if you throw some grain in like a cellar and
Speaker 2: leave it alone for a little while, it'll spontaneously generate mice. Right,
Speaker 2: you've heard that before.
Speaker 1: Haven't you sure? That old bumper sticker.
Speaker 2: Apparently there's an element that I'd never heard of before.
Speaker 2: You have to put the grains of wheat on a
Speaker 2: soiled shirt and then it'll generate mice after a given
Speaker 2: amount of time. And that came from the mind of
Speaker 2: a guy named Antoine Lewen Hook Levin' hook whoa von Levinhook, Yeah,
Speaker 2: who in the sixteen seventies basically pointed to a bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff and said, spontaneous generation, spontaneous generation, spontaneous generation.
Speaker 2: And again he was so he wasn't actually coming up
Speaker 2: with this idea of spontaneous generation. He was giving it
Speaker 2: a boost. In the seventeenth century. It was actually a
Speaker 2: really ancient way of explaining where life came from. And
Speaker 2: at the time of again Aristotle, there were three competing theories, right,
Speaker 2: there was spontaneous generation, there was Preformationism, and then there
Speaker 2: was epigenesis, and depending on what you thought about what
Speaker 2: you subscribe to at least one, if not two, of
Speaker 2: those at the same time.
Speaker 1: Can I name my favorite spontaneous generation from Jean Baptista
Speaker 1: von Helmont. Yes, that if you took a brick mold
Speaker 1: and lined it with basil, you would spawn scorpions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that weird?
Speaker 1: It's pretty good.
Speaker 2: He also said, and I think I said it was
Speaker 2: Antoine von Levinhook who said that. No, I'm sorry. That
Speaker 2: was the guy who started to perfect the microscope. He
Speaker 2: comes in later on. I was wrong, But von Helmont
Speaker 2: van Helmont, he was the one that came up with
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of different ones, like mice from grain,
Speaker 2: scorpions from brick molds. I think insects was a huge one.
Speaker 2: That if you laid out rotting meat, Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: maggots would spontaneously generate. And again it's you. It sounds mad,
Speaker 2: it sounds ridiculous, and preposterous to us today. But that
Speaker 2: was before Antoine von Levinhook, the Dutch scientist introduced or
Speaker 2: popularized the microscope, and could show with his much more
Speaker 2: improved version of the microscope that there was a whole
Speaker 2: other world out there that's invisible to the naked eye.
Speaker 2: Prior to that, they had no idea and if they
Speaker 2: did it, they were just guessing. And so it would
Speaker 2: make sense that you're like, okay, if you lease some
Speaker 2: rotting meat out these totally these things just come out
Speaker 2: of nowhere. The maggots generate from spontaneously from rotting meat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know that was disproved before the microscope.
Speaker 1: The maggots at least, yeah by Francesco Ready was a
Speaker 1: Tuscan physician and said, you know, all you gotta do
Speaker 1: is keep the flies off of it. You're not going
Speaker 1: to get maggots. So let's just cover it with some
Speaker 1: muslin and voila, no maggots. So everyone was a little disappointed.
Speaker 1: I think the microscope comes along and it didn't like
Speaker 1: blow up everything automatically as far as these theories go.
Speaker 1: It did not settle anything out of the gate, because
Speaker 1: what basically they were saying was you know, there are
Speaker 1: things that are so tiny we can see him with
Speaker 1: our naked eye, but now he can see him with
Speaker 1: this microscope. But then all of a sudden people started saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: those tiny things are what's causing the spontaneous generation. Then
Speaker 1: we just couldn't see them.
Speaker 2: Before, right. But then the microscope also said the people
Speaker 2: who were in favor of spontaneous generation said, great, those
Speaker 2: are the things that are spontaneously generating. Then we just
Speaker 2: don't see them until they become maggots. And so they
Speaker 2: performed experiments where they would seal a flask of water,
Speaker 2: boil it to sterilize it, and then wait a few
Speaker 2: days and go back and look, and there would be
Speaker 2: microbes again where there hadn't been before, and they're like,
Speaker 2: see spontaneous generation. And then some of the critics of
Speaker 2: those experiments said, you guys just aren't boiling it long enough.
Speaker 2: It's not actually sterile, right. And it wasn't until I
Speaker 2: think eighteen sixty when Louis Pasture came along and said
Speaker 2: this is how you precisely sterilize things and showed the
Speaker 2: world how to do it, that he really was. He
Speaker 2: managed to really kind of put the final nail in
Speaker 2: the coffin for spontaneous generation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was kind of it. From that moment
Speaker 1: we knew or you know, we started to build on
Speaker 1: the idea that life arises from life. That's the only
Speaker 1: way things do not spontaneously generate. As fun of an
Speaker 1: idea as that is, life comes from life and that's
Speaker 1: the only place that comes from. Yes.
Speaker 2: So I said that in the ancient world, you may
Speaker 2: have subscribed to two of those, and the reason why
Speaker 2: is because one of them epigenesis, an Aristotle product Aristotle
Speaker 2: brand was pretty accurate. It was Aristotle explaining that the
Speaker 2: fluids from the mother and the fluids from the father
Speaker 2: exchange during sexual reproduction, are what give rise to biology,
Speaker 2: what gives rise to life, and after that it just
Speaker 2: becomes an embryo and starts growing. And the main rival
Speaker 2: that epigenesis was Preformationism, which said that if you could
Speaker 2: get a sample of your dad's and could zoom in
Speaker 2: on an individual sperm cell, you would see a mini
Speaker 2: version of yourself and that you that was just that
Speaker 2: was deposited in your mom where you started to grow,
Speaker 2: You came out of your mom, you kept growing until
Speaker 2: you finally reached your adult size, but you were pre
Speaker 2: formed even before you were conceived, and those were the
Speaker 2: two rivals. But the cool thing about epigenesis is that
Speaker 2: you could say epigenesis and spontaneous generation can coexist because
Speaker 2: something spontaneously generate, like say crocodiles out of an exposed riverbank,
Speaker 2: once they once they spontaneously generate, then they'll just start
Speaker 2: reproducing biologically through epigenesis.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Pretty interesting that Aristotle finally got one, right.
Speaker 1: That guy, Yeah, that guy. I like the Aristotle brand.
Speaker 2: I had a really great time, and I know you did,
Speaker 2: so I say we do a part two of this someday.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll see.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, as everyone's waiting for that, you can go
Speaker 2: check out this House of Works article about things we
Speaker 2: believe before the scientific method. And I think since I
Speaker 2: said that, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I dug this one out. Jeez, this one's been
Speaker 1: out there for a long time, so I'm just gonna say,
Speaker 1: long time coming. Okay, Hey, guys, just listen to how
Speaker 1: conversion therapy doesn't work. Oh yeah, Joe, the listener got
Speaker 1: on you. I guess this was another listener mail got
Speaker 1: on to you about saying and historic and then you
Speaker 1: started to doubt every H word. But the rule is
Speaker 1: super simple, guys. As long as you know how things sound,
Speaker 1: does the word start with a vowel sound? If the
Speaker 1: answer is yes, then and is correct, it starts with
Speaker 1: a consonant use a. So here's some examples. The Undertaker
Speaker 1: tapped people out with a Hell's gate. I guess that's
Speaker 1: a wrestling thing, Okay. The atomic leg drop is a
Speaker 1: hul Cogan move. I like this guy. It was an
Speaker 1: honor to have seen bray Wyatt's creativity on screen, and honor.
Speaker 1: The pre show for this pay per view lasted an hour,
Speaker 1: so n historic. It sounds snooty almost to say n historic,
Speaker 1: but it's true because you say it takes about an hour,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't sound snooty.
Speaker 2: No, But it depends on how much you emphasize the
Speaker 2: H and historic, because most people don't say historic. It's historic, right,
Speaker 2: whereas honor it's like that it starts with an oh,
Speaker 2: like the H is silent.
Speaker 1: Almost right, like if England and Henry Higgins is biking
Speaker 1: to Yeah. Exactly, These examples, guys, brings me to the
Speaker 1: request from my email, could you do a show in
Speaker 1: pro wrestling? Nice and that is from Aviva.
Speaker 2: Thanks a Viva. That was a great email, one of
Speaker 2: the all time greats. I agree, and yes, we'll do
Speaker 2: one on pro wrestling someday. We've done We've nibbled around
Speaker 2: the edges, but we'll finally do one on just pro wrestling.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We did Mexican wrestling, right, Lucha liber.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we also did a live one on Andre the Giant.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, so maybe not on pro wrestling then.
Speaker 2: Well, if you want to be like a Viva and
Speaker 2: take your shot at requesting an episode, you can do
Speaker 2: that by sending us an email to Stuff Podcasts at
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: You Know, Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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