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