Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're up to I think number five on
Speaker 1: the list of our science playlist, and this is a
Speaker 1: good one. Things we believe before the scientific Method. I
Speaker 1: remember really enjoying this one, so I hope you dive
Speaker 1: in right now. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
Speaker 1: 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 2: with it. And it is this episode about what people
Speaker 2: believe before 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 a lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: made since 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 hypothsis? 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 and people are like, well that's
Speaker 1: good enough for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which meant also if philosophy was in there, you
Speaker 2: had to also it had to explain why more than
Speaker 2: be reliably consistent in its results.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So one of the first ones that I think people
Speaker 2: think of when they think of ancient science as the
Speaker 2: for humors humors of medicine, which was something that came
Speaker 2: along from Hippocrates all the way back in I think
Speaker 2: the fourth or fifth century BCE and was in place
Speaker 2: until the sixteen hundreds. Essentially that was how people practiced 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 with it,
Speaker 1: and Galen is who is probably most people think of
Speaker 1: Galen when they think of the humors, the poor humors, right,
Speaker 1: But humor h U m O r is Latin meaning fluid,
Speaker 1: and that's basically what they're talking about with the poor humors.
Speaker 1: Almost at humids, the four humors, which are the fluids
Speaker 1: of the body, and we should just name them quickly.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, flint, fhlim. Yeah, you got blood, and
Speaker 1: then you got the two biles. You got black bile
Speaker 1: 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 It's not literally that no, a
Speaker 1: 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 hotter, cold, wet or dry,
Speaker 2: and depending on what symptoms you had, you either had
Speaker 2: like a hot and wet disease, right, or a cold
Speaker 2: and dry disease, and the treatment was to use the opposite.
Speaker 2: So I think pneumonia was cold and wet because it
Speaker 2: came on during the winter, which is very cold and
Speaker 2: wet around the Mediterranean at the time, and you would
Speaker 2: treat that with something warm and dry. So herbs were
Speaker 2: warm and dry, you would treat use herbs to treat pneumonia.
Speaker 2: And the whole pursuit was just to regain balance. Each
Speaker 2: person at a pre I guess ordained balance of those
Speaker 2: four humors, and when they got out of whack, that's
Speaker 2: when you were you came 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 Antlive years ago. You just need
Speaker 1: a good bleeding. That's what they were doing. They were
Speaker 1: trying to get you back into balance by removing whatever
Speaker 1: humor they thought, you know, either the flimme or the
Speaker 1: blood thought would you needed you had an excess of
Speaker 1: at the time, to bring you back into homeostasis. So
Speaker 1: they were again they were wrong, but you know, things
Speaker 1: like homeostasis, they were on the right track with some
Speaker 1: 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, that was enough for people. It was the
Speaker 1: consistency of sort of the idea that's repeated over and
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 2: India and that's why they think it might have come
Speaker 2: from India originally to Greece. But the basis of it
Speaker 2: is that you use like movement and diet to keep
Speaker 2: your humors in balance, and that was kind of the
Speaker 2: basis of the Greek interpretation too, But then they took
Speaker 2: it too far and started using it to treat disease
Speaker 2: and doing all sorts of weird stuff. So now we
Speaker 2: have 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.
Speaker 2: Why not.
Speaker 1: You have sneakily not 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?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I say that, I say so. I agree, that's
Speaker 2: what I say.
Speaker 1: All right, this one's interesting and this has to do
Speaker 1: with Yeah, it sounds a little whack, 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 Adoxus, 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
Speaker 1: on the center of all celestial motion is the center
Speaker 1: of the universe. And I said, you know, he can't
Speaker 1: be blamed for that first one, even though he was
Speaker 1: wrong about geocentrism. At the time, when you stood on
Speaker 1: the 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. 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 Aximin's 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 Eudoxus and Aximni's basically said it's shells.
Speaker 2: And then Eudoxis was the first one to really lay
Speaker 2: out an explanation of theory for how these shells worked.
Speaker 2: And I think he came up with twenty seven different shells.
Speaker 2: Some shells had shells within shells. It got really kind
Speaker 2: of crazy. But the point of this isn't like because
Speaker 2: Eudoxus was mad or anything like that. He had to
Speaker 2: keep adding shells to explain things they saw in the
Speaker 2: 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 regulars. He was basically wrong. Yeah, on
Speaker 2: all five of those points. But the reason that they
Speaker 2: that he thought it was circular was that circles were perfect.
Speaker 2: And again, the Earth was the center of the universe
Speaker 2: and it was created by the gods, so of course
Speaker 2: it was perfect. But other people have pointed out that
Speaker 2: it had to be circular if he was going to
Speaker 2: apply math, because non circular math for movement hadn't really
Speaker 2: been created yet. Yeah, that's basically that's all he had
Speaker 2: to work with was circular motion. So if he was
Speaker 2: going to actually investigate this and try to figure it
Speaker 2: out with math, he had to be circular. So just
Speaker 2: by what he had available at the time, that's why
Speaker 2: this motion was supposedly circular. But that was a huge
Speaker 2: boondoggle because it's not circular, as we found out finally
Speaker 2: from Kepler, who came along and I think the seventeenth century.
Speaker 2: So again this is like two thousand years. People are
Speaker 2: like shells is where it's at. Even Copernicus who said
Speaker 2: he was the first one to really say the Sun
Speaker 2: is at the center of the universe, and what he
Speaker 2: was talking about was this solar system and he created
Speaker 2: a revolution with that. He still was saying, but it's
Speaker 2: 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 along, it's like there's no shells and these
Speaker 2: orbits aren't circular, they're elliptical, and he ended up laying
Speaker 2: 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 adams come together to
Speaker 2: form a rock hi cans?
Speaker 1: That's a good teaser, you know. Yeah, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's easy to poke fun of now. But the other
Speaker 1: alternative is they didn't even try, and as we see
Speaker 1: time and time again. A lot of the stuff that
Speaker 1: they came up with at least led to the next
Speaker 1: thing and the next thing. And that's what science is.
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: off you. 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 a 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 promised 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 Pythagoreans, 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: pronounced that.
Speaker 2: And titch Thun I think it's Antichthon and Tickson. 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 earth that's either in the same orbit or in
Speaker 2: its own orbit, but always opposite the Sun from Earth.
Speaker 2: Right right, This wasn't something where they were pointing up
Speaker 2: in it was Mars unless they called Mars. This is
Speaker 2: a hypothetical planet that they were saying was out there,
Speaker 2: we just can't see it. And then also with the
Speaker 2: Central Fire, they're not saying that was the Sun. The
Speaker 2: Sun had its own orbit around the Central Fire. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the Central Fire was unseen because Greece always revolved
Speaker 2: in a way, or the Earth always revolved in a
Speaker 2: way that Greece was opposite the Central Fire, so it
Speaker 2: could never see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there was this guy, uh 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, Croton.
Speaker 1: But Croton was actually in southern Italy and he was
Speaker 1: another Greek philosopher. Scientists 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, 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 fire sism.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, he basically said, there's a central fire, everything
Speaker 2: orbits around the central fire, and the all of the
Speaker 2: orbits are circular. They love circular orbits, and that the Earth,
Speaker 2: the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets each had
Speaker 2: their own orbit. And there was that counter Earth too,
Speaker 2: bizarro Earth and Tikman that was opposite Earth at all times.
Speaker 2: That made ten ten orbits altogether. And there are a
Speaker 2: couple of reasons for that. One is that to the Pythagoreans,
Speaker 2: ten was a perfect number. So of course there were
Speaker 2: ten orbits, but also it explained having that counter Earth,
Speaker 2: that tenth orbit explained lunar eclipses because then that meant
Speaker 2: that that was just a tick thin shadow being cast
Speaker 2: 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 suns took a year, the
Speaker 1: moons 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, but 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. Yeah,
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
Speaker 2: said it's actually possible, hypothetically for a counter Earth to
Speaker 2: exist 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. Is 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. That turns out.
Speaker 1: That's right, I'm sure. Jim Morrison was very disappointed to
Speaker 1: hear that the central fire went away. This all reminded
Speaker 1: 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 issh 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 pink floidy. Yeah, you're right, Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: glad we finally settled it.
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, wind, fire,
Speaker 2: 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 exactly.
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think so he was all about the air.
Speaker 1: And Plato came along and then later said, actually we've
Speaker 1: got earth, fire, water, and air. And Aristotle said, don't
Speaker 1: forget about the ether. And 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 feel like a 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: where we know what water is, we know what air is,
Speaker 2: we know what fire is, and earth that's what we're
Speaker 2: gonna 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, which right, then it burned, which did.
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 more 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: the seventies, so.
Speaker 2: I would say probably forty eight. Let's say he was
Speaker 2: born in nineteen forty eight. So seventy five, he'd be
Speaker 2: something that's perfect age to complaint 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, I'm all of
Speaker 2: it just vanishes. Yeah, you stop existing.
Speaker 1: That's great. That's a secret to our longevity.
Speaker 2: That's right. We just both stop existing in the other's
Speaker 2: minds until the next time.
Speaker 1: All right, so where are we? We are a 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 of it there, and he said, it's made up
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you break it up, it's
Speaker 1: made up of smaller things. But if you keep breaking
Speaker 1: that thing up, you're never gonna get down to fire,
Speaker 1: no matter how 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 adams. Yeah, this guy came up with
Speaker 2: the idea of adams, which he not only mad said
Speaker 2: were the indivisible base units of everything everything. He also
Speaker 2: said that they were into instructible and eternal. And then
Speaker 2: he also said that they exist in free space around
Speaker 2: us what you would call today a vacuum. So this
Speaker 2: guy basically predicted atomic theory a couple 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 would if you broke it down to its constituent part,
Speaker 2: like its base atom. It was a rabbit atom, or
Speaker 2: a rock atom, or a log atom, or a chuck atom,
Speaker 2: the things. The thing it was, it was like that
Speaker 2: specific kind of atom rather than a combination of just
Speaker 2: 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 dare
Speaker 1: say excellent up in 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,
Speaker 1: sure I would. You know, it's like, do you mind
Speaker 1: if I lift my togad? And he could?
Speaker 2: You added that?
Speaker 1: So you know, everyone of course wanted to know what
Speaker 1: Aristotle and Plato thought, even you know at the time
Speaker 1: or especially at the time, and they both basically rejected
Speaker 1: these ideas. Aristotle sort of accepted it, but he said, well, also,
Speaker 1: there are those four core elements, but they can be
Speaker 1: transformed into one another. And everyone was like, oh God,
Speaker 1: here he goes again, Like now we have to start
Speaker 1: thinking that because Aristotle said.
Speaker 2: It exactly, he was. He threw his lot in with
Speaker 2: the four elements, in part because he totally rejected Democritis's
Speaker 2: assertion that there was such a thing as Adams moving
Speaker 2: in a void in free space. He said, there's no
Speaker 2: such thing as a void. Everything around us is connected,
Speaker 2: Like the stuff that looks like space between you and me,
Speaker 2: that's the air element filling that up. Like there's nothing
Speaker 2: that's not connected. And because he just would not accept
Speaker 2: the idea of a vacuum, he gave the thumbs up
Speaker 2: to Empedocle's idea with the elements thumbs down to Democritis.
Speaker 2: So Democritis is incredibly accurate. Prediction would have to wait
Speaker 2: about two thousand years before people finally came around and
Speaker 2: were like, oh, Democritis was super.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, exactly. And that's in sixteen forty three. Evangelista
Speaker 1: Torricelli came along.
Speaker 2: Linda Evangelista Torricelli, that's.
Speaker 1: Right, an Italian mathematician, this time studying under Galileo, came
Speaker 1: along and showed that air and I believe he was
Speaker 1: he the first person to create a vacuum in an
Speaker 1: experiment like this. Yeah, so that's a pretty key part here,
Speaker 1: But in a vacuum, showed that air had weight, like
Speaker 1: this thing that we can't see or well, sometimes you
Speaker 1: can smell it, I guess, but you can't see it
Speaker 1: or feel it or anything like that. But it was
Speaker 1: still capable of pushing down liquid mercury, which is also
Speaker 1: how he got the barometer, by the way, and everyone
Speaker 1: was like it rocked everyone's world, basically, like we can't
Speaker 1: feel it, we can't see it, but it has weight,
Speaker 1: so it's got to be made of something, and so
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 2: predictions part of his atomic theory, was right. So that
Speaker 2: was what really led to the investigation into atomic theory,
Speaker 2: which is finally I think put forth in I think
Speaker 2: eighteen oh three maybe by John Dalton. Amazing, It really
Speaker 2: is amazing that he got that close. Like imagine just
Speaker 2: and again he's guessing. He had no way of testing
Speaker 2: any of this, but it was a really 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: All right, well, we're gonna take our final break and
Speaker 1: we're gonna come back and talk about our final topic.
Speaker 1: 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,
Speaker 2: right have you 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,
Speaker 2: Yeah who? In the sixteen seventies, basically pointed to a
Speaker 2: bunch 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 Leevinhook 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
Speaker 2: one that if you laid out rotting meat. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a big one, maggots would spontaneously generate. And again
Speaker 2: it sounds mad, it sounds ridiculous, preposterous to us today,
Speaker 2: but that was before Antoine von Leevenhook, the Dutch scientists
Speaker 2: introduced or popularized the microscope, and could show with his
Speaker 2: much more improved version of the microscope that there was
Speaker 2: a whole other world out there that's invisible to the
Speaker 2: naked eye. Prior to that, they had no idea and
Speaker 2: if they did it, they were just guessing. And so
Speaker 2: it would make sense that you're like, okay, if you
Speaker 2: lease some rotting meat out, these totally these things just
Speaker 2: come out of nowhere. The maggots generate from spontaneously from
Speaker 2: 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 position 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 maggot. So everyone was a little disappointed.
Speaker 1: I think the microscope comes along right, and it didn't
Speaker 1: like 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't see them with
Speaker 1: our naked eye, but now we can see them 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.
Speaker 2: Them before, right, But then the microscope also said the
Speaker 2: people who were in favor of spontaneous generation said, great,
Speaker 2: those are the things that are spontaneously generating. Then we
Speaker 2: just don't see them until they become maggots. And so
Speaker 2: they 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 right. And it wasn't until I think
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty when Louis Pasture came along and said, this
Speaker 2: is how you precisely sterilize things and showed the world
Speaker 2: how to do it, that he really was He managed
Speaker 2: to really kind of put the final nail in the
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Yes. So I said that in the ancient world you
Speaker 2: may have subscribed to two of those, and the reason
Speaker 2: why is because one of them epigenesis, an Aristotle product
Speaker 2: Aristotle brand was pretty pretty accurate. It was Aristotle explaining
Speaker 2: that the fluids from the mother and the fluids from
Speaker 2: the father exchanged during sexual reproduction, are what of rise
Speaker 2: to biology, what gives rise to life, and after that
Speaker 2: it just becomes an embryo and starts growing. And the
Speaker 2: main rival that epigenesis was Preformationism, which said that if
Speaker 2: you could get a sample of your dad's sperm and
Speaker 2: could zoom in on an individual sperm cell, you would
Speaker 2: see a mini version of yourself and that you that
Speaker 2: was just that was deposited in your mom where you
Speaker 2: started to grow, You came out of your mom, you
Speaker 2: kept growing until you finally reached your adult size. But
Speaker 2: you were pre formed even before you were conceived. And
Speaker 2: those were the two rivals. But the cool thing about
Speaker 2: epigenesis is that you could say epigenesis and spontaneous generation
Speaker 2: can coexist because something spontaneously generate, like say crocodiles out
Speaker 2: of an exposed riverbank. They once they spontaneously generate, then
Speaker 2: they'll just start 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 2: all right, we'll see. Okay. Well, as everyone's waiting for that,
Speaker 2: you can go check out this housetuff Works article about
Speaker 2: things we believe before the scientific method. And I think
Speaker 2: since I 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
Speaker 1: say long time coming. Okay, hey, guys, just listen to
Speaker 1: how conversion therapy doesn't work. Oh yeah, Joe, the listener
Speaker 1: got on you. I guess this was another listener mail
Speaker 1: got on to you about saying and historic, and then
Speaker 1: you started to doubt every H word. But the rule
Speaker 1: is super simple, guys. As long as you know how
Speaker 1: things sound, does the word start with a vowel sound?
Speaker 1: If the answer is yes, then and is correct, it
Speaker 1: starts with a consonant use a. So here's some examples.
Speaker 1: The Undertaker tapped people out with a Hell's gate. I
Speaker 1: guess that's a wrestling thing.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The atomic leg drop is a Hulk Hogan move.
Speaker 2: I like this guy.
Speaker 1: It was an honor to have seen bray Wyatt's creativity
Speaker 1: on screen and honor. The pre show for this pay
Speaker 1: per view lasted an hour, so n historic. It sounds
Speaker 1: snooty almost to say nhistoric, but it's true because you
Speaker 1: say it takes about an hour, 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 ya.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: These examples, guys, brings me to the request from my email,
Speaker 1: could you do a show in pro wrestling?
Speaker 2: Nice?
Speaker 1: And that is from Aviva.
Speaker 2: Thanks Aviva, that was a great email, one of the
Speaker 2: all time greats. I agree, and yes, we'll do one
Speaker 2: on pro wrestling someday We've done We've nibbled around the edges,
Speaker 2: but we'll finally do one on just pro wrestling.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We did Mexican wrestling, right, Lucha Libra.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we also did a live one on Andre the Giant.
Speaker 1: M So maybe not on pro wrestling.
Speaker 2: Then well, if you want to be like a Viva
Speaker 2: and take your shot at requesting an episode, you can
Speaker 2: do that by sending us an email to Stuff podcast
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.