WEBVTT - How the Scientific Method Works 0:00:01.360 --> 0:00:03.640 Hey, everybody, we're up to I think number five on 0:00:03.680 --> 0:00:06.640 the list of our science playlist, and this is a 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:09.760 good one. Things we believe before the scientific Method. I 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:11.920 remember really enjoying this one, so I hope you dive 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:17.200 in right now. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:21.040 production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:27.360 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:29.800 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:37.040 should Know, the Let's get Jiggy with Science edition. You 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:40.800 know you're about to get jiggy Chuck with it, Yeah, 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:45.320 with it. And it is this episode about what people 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:47.479 believe before the scientific method. 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:50.120 Yeah, you know, we have a pretty good episode on 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.840 the scientific method. And we have talked about some of 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.959 this stuff here and there throughout the years, like you know, 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:01.280 early science, and it's easy to make fun of that stuff, right, 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:03.800 but we are here not to make fun of it 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:07.520 and not necessarily to defend it, but to just put 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:12.160 it into perspective of where these people were at the time. 0:01:12.720 --> 0:01:14.320 And you can see how a lot of this stuff 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:15.520 made since at the time. 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:19.880 See, that was as jiggy as it comes, all right, 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.160 see you later. Yeah, that was really well put and 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:24.920 just as a refresher real quick, so you don't have 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:27.119 to pause and go back and listen to our scientific 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:29.200 method episode. You can if you want, but if you 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.319 don't feel like doing that, the scientific method is just 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:36.959 basically a plan to keep yourself from going down blind 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:40.480 alleys or being misled by what seems to be the 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:43.600 case but isn't necessarily the case. Sometimes your own eyes 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.200 can lie to you, and it basically says is like, 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:51.160 based on you know, data you've collected or things you've observed, 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:55.400 form a hypothesis like this happens because of this, figure 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:58.760 out how to test it, test it, look at the results, 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.360 did it support the hypothsis? Did it not support the hypothesis, 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.040 and either keep going forward or go back to square one? 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:10.160 And by testing it, that's where the scientific method really shines. 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:13.919 And before the scientific method, people didn't do that. They 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:20.600 used their eyes, the empiricists, they formed theories, the rationalists 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:25.720 or dogmatists, they performed experiments, the methodists, that's really what 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:29.520 they called them. But they didn't actually like test this stuff, 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:33.560 and so they were able to create these theories that 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:36.639 were totally wrong. Sometimes we're really right, but in a 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:39.640 lot of cases we're really wrong, and that those things 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:42.680 were adopted for like thousands of years in some cases. 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:45.520 Yeah, because a lot of science was mixed up with 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.040 philosophy for a long long time. And as you'll see 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:51.600 with some of these, like if you had a good 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:56.440 enough sort of philosophical thought about something and other people said, hey, 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:58.760 that makes sense, and you kept repeating it a lot 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:01.200 then at the time and people are like, well that's 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:02.640 good enough for us. 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:04.880 Yeah, which meant also if philosophy was in there, you 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:08.040 had to also it had to explain why more than 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:11.880 be reliably consistent in its results. 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:13.120 Yeah, exactly. 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:16.840 So one of the first ones that I think people 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:19.880 think of when they think of ancient science as the 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:24.799 for humors humors of medicine, which was something that came 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:29.239 along from Hippocrates all the way back in I think 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:33.560 the fourth or fifth century BCE and was in place 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:39.640 until the sixteen hundreds. Essentially that was how people practiced medicine. 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:43.960 Yeah, I mean, that's a long run. Hippocrates probably did 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:47.800 not make it up himself. It's theorized that he probably 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:51.240 brought it over or he didn't necessarily, but it was 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:55.960 brought over to the Greeks maybe from India, maybe from Egypt, 0:03:56.640 --> 0:04:00.480 but Hippocrates ran with it, and then Galen really with it, 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:03.840 and Galen is who is probably most people think of 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:06.680 Galen when they think of the humors, the poor humors, right, 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:10.880 But humor h U m O r is Latin meaning fluid, 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.800 and that's basically what they're talking about with the poor humors. 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:19.240 Almost at humids, the four humors, which are the fluids 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:23.440 of the body, and we should just name them quickly. 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:28.159 I think, yeah, flint, fhlim. Yeah, you got blood, and 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:30.680 then you got the two biles. You got black bile 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:32.400 and yellow bile. 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:37.239 Right, And those things are not just the sum total 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.039 of what was studied or what was responsible for ill 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:43.479 health or for health. They almost stood in for a 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.600 bunch of other things too, Like your energy could be 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:51.240 low or angry or overly happy, and all those were 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:54.839 associated with different humors, right. So I think it was 0:04:55.000 --> 0:05:00.280 Palamar University website on it basically put it like more 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.920 than just fluids themselves. You could think of the humors 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:09.240 as those things that flow fluids, energy, that kind of stuff. Yeah, 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:14.400 and all these humors also had complexions. They had they 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:17.600 were either wet or dry, cold or hot, and there 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:19.160 were combinations. 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:22.400 Of those, but not It's not literally that no, a 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:24.920 little confusing, it's super duper confusing. 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:27.120 And I think this is an example of what happens 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.960 when people over a couple thousand years kind of contribute 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:33.080 to stuff. It gets a little off kilter. 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:36.040 Yeah, like blood is hot and wet, But that didn't 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:38.680 necessarily mean they're saying that when you touch blood it 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:42.960 was hot to the touch, right, It's almost like what 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:48.080 a synesthesiac approach right to the body. 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:52.800 Yeah. Well, put so like water is cold, boiling water 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:57.120 is cold, ice is hot. I don't understand some of 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:00.680 it exactly right. So the upshot of it was is 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:06.880 that each humor was hot and hot or it has 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:10.320 It had a temperature and humidity hotter, cold, wet or dry, 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:14.800 and depending on what symptoms you had, you either had 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:20.080 like a hot and wet disease, right, or a cold 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:25.640 and dry disease, and the treatment was to use the opposite. 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:29.200 So I think pneumonia was cold and wet because it 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:32.320 came on during the winter, which is very cold and 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:35.360 wet around the Mediterranean at the time, and you would 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:38.520 treat that with something warm and dry. So herbs were 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.480 warm and dry, you would treat use herbs to treat pneumonia. 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.800 And the whole pursuit was just to regain balance. Each 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:50.920 person at a pre I guess ordained balance of those 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:53.279 four humors, and when they got out of whack, that's 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:55.840 when you were you came down with the disease. 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:59.480 Yeah, so you've heard about, you know, forcing yourself to 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:03.359 vomit or you know, the bleeding, the old great Steve 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:06.120 Martin sketch from Saturday Antlive years ago. You just need 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.240 a good bleeding. That's what they were doing. They were 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:14.320 trying to get you back into balance by removing whatever 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:16.400 humor they thought, you know, either the flimme or the 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:19.480 blood thought would you needed you had an excess of 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:23.840 at the time, to bring you back into homeostasis. So 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:28.160 they were again they were wrong, but you know, things 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:30.240 like homeostasis, they were on the right track with some 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:32.720 of this, some of these ideas at least for sure. 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:34.960 Yeah, And that's I think kind of a recurring theme 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:37.600 in this. When you look in on ancient science and 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.880 ancient knowledge, it's like they kind of had like the 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:43.160 contours of some of these and that's a good example 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:48.480 of that contours exactly. So It wasn't until Paracelsus who 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:53.440 came up I think in our Zenobiotics episode. When he 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:58.000 came along, he was definitely an outlier and an outsider thinker, 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:01.200 and he was like, I think Galen was just really wrong. 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:05.080 This stuff just doesn't quite add up. Yeah. And I 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:08.720 think William Harvey, who was an English i think physician 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:12.120 in sixteen sixteen, he shows that the heart pumps blood 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:17.480 and that just completely undermined the humoral medicine thought that 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:21.320 these these humors moved around the body through attractive forces. 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:24.800 Yeah, and you know, again, this is one of those 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:27.000 kind of what I said in the intro, like, this 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:28.880 is one of those that people believed and got on 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:32.319 board with because it made sense at the time. It 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:37.520 was something that they were very persistent about. And if 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:42.400 you're persistent about something, even if it wasn't proven at 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:46.040 the time, that was enough for people. It was the 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:49.679 consistency of sort of the idea that's repeated over and 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.000 over that got people on board for a long time, 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:52.800 hundreds of years. 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:56.560 Yeah, and I think it's interesting, like the humoral medicine 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.720 is still one of the foundations of ayervedic medicine from 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.040 India and that's why they think it might have come 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:07.080 from India originally to Greece. But the basis of it 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.920 is that you use like movement and diet to keep 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:13.840 your humors in balance, and that was kind of the 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.040 basis of the Greek interpretation too, But then they took 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:20.280 it too far and started using it to treat disease 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:24.240 and doing all sorts of weird stuff. So now we 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:28.439 have modern medicine, and modern medicine likes to disown its predecessors. 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:30.720 But it wouldn't be here if we didn't have things 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:31.880 like humoral medicine. 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:33.760 First up with Galen. 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:35.240 Why not. 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.079 You have sneakily not mentioned that this is a top five. 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:44.600 Oh, that's right, it's a top five, maybe part one 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:46.280 of a top ten. Who knows. 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.400 Yeah, we'll see. Should we try and knock out the 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:49.840 next one? 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:52.560 Yeah, I say that, I say so. I agree, that's 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:53.120 what I say. 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:56.800 All right, this one's interesting and this has to do 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:01.320 with Yeah, it sounds a little whack, but again you 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.240 have to keep in mind where they were at the time. 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:09.199 So this is the idea put forth by how do 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:10.080 you pronounce that name? 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:18.920 I'm going with Adoxus, Eudoxus eudoxis, Yeah, I think eudoxis 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:19.560 all right. 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:25.200 Eudoxus of Nidos was born between three ninety five and 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:29.199 three ninety BCC lived to kind of early to mid fifties. 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:32.400 And he came along and said, all right, I've got 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:36.000 some pretty radical things to throw out there that are fivefold. 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:39.000 Part one, the Earth is the center of the universe. 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:39.520 Check. 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:43.959 And everyone was like, sounds reasonable, And it was reasonable 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:45.600 at the time. And we'll talk about that in a second. 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:49.120 Number two, all celestial motion is circular Roger number three, 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:53.760 all celestial motion is regular. Number four, The center of 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:56.720 the path of any celestial motion is the same as 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:59.880 the center of its motion, all right. And then number 0:10:59.880 --> 0:11:02.920 on the center of all celestial motion is the center 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.440 of the universe. And I said, you know, he can't 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:09.320 be blamed for that first one, even though he was 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:14.440 wrong about geocentrism. At the time, when you stood on 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:17.360 the planet and you looked up and you saw you know, 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:21.360 stars sort of moving and other things moving in a 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:23.600 circle around the Earth, you probably felt like you were 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:25.360 the center of the universe exactly. 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:27.040 I mean, it would just make sense. You'd be a 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.200 fool to think otherwise because there's no indication that the 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:33.680 Earth itself is also moving. It seems like everything else 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:35.600 is moving around the Earth, so it's not so far 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:37.760 fetched to think that, oh, the Earth is the center 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.040 of the universe. Part of it also tied into that 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:43.880 natural philosophy thing where humans were the center of the universe. 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:47.440 They were like the creation of the gods, and of 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:50.200 course why would Earth be anything but the center of 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:53.360 the universe. But it also had to do with practical stuff, 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:54.920 like what they saw with their own eyes. 0:11:55.400 --> 0:11:57.240 Yeah, Like, he wasn't the first person to come up 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.439 with this, like this has been around for a long 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:01.840 long time. Was just sort of officially reaffirming it. 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:04.000 But he was the first person to give us a 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:10.960 model of the movement of the cosmos, celestial bodies moving 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:14.880 through the sky and trying to explain it. And somebody 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.679 who came before him an Aximin's I'm going with that. 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:21.679 He was the first one to say, Hey, I've got it. 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.320 This is back in the sixth century VC. It shells. 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.800 Everything exists in shells, man. 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:37.320 Yeah, the idea that, like, I mean, it almost sounds 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:43.840 like he was creating little miniature galaxies and like everything 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:47.080 we see is contained inside its own little miniature galaxy, 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:48.959 like literally contained in a shell. 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:53.040 Yes, but all of these shells are rotating in different 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:54.480 orbits around. 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:58.960 Earth, right, but they can affect one another, right Or 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:00.000 did that come along later? 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:04.439 That came along with Eudoxus and Aximni's basically said it's shells. 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.680 And then Eudoxis was the first one to really lay 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:12.440 out an explanation of theory for how these shells worked. 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:15.520 And I think he came up with twenty seven different shells. 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:19.760 Some shells had shells within shells. It got really kind 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:23.360 of crazy. But the point of this isn't like because 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:27.199 Eudoxus was mad or anything like that. He had to 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:30.120 keep adding shells to explain things they saw in the 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:30.800 night sky. 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:33.920 Yeah, so it's almost like they dug themselves a bit 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:36.800 of a hole. Instead of course correcting and saying, well, 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:39.680 maybe we should look into a different theory or something, 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:42.880 they were just like kept adding shells exactly. 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:46.640 So one of the big problems was that first of all, 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:48.840 the Earth is not the center of the universe, but 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:53.480 also that the motion of celestial bodies is not circular 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:58.480 and it's not regulars. He was basically wrong. Yeah, on 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:03.800 all five of those points. But the reason that they 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:06.640 that he thought it was circular was that circles were perfect. 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:08.760 And again, the Earth was the center of the universe 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:10.480 and it was created by the gods, so of course 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:13.400 it was perfect. But other people have pointed out that 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:15.320 it had to be circular if he was going to 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:20.880 apply math, because non circular math for movement hadn't really 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.440 been created yet. Yeah, that's basically that's all he had 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:26.680 to work with was circular motion. So if he was 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:28.840 going to actually investigate this and try to figure it 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:32.600 out with math, he had to be circular. So just 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:36.240 by what he had available at the time, that's why 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.000 this motion was supposedly circular. But that was a huge 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.640 boondoggle because it's not circular, as we found out finally 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:46.160 from Kepler, who came along and I think the seventeenth century. 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:49.760 So again this is like two thousand years. People are 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:54.240 like shells is where it's at. Even Copernicus who said 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:57.160 he was the first one to really say the Sun 0:14:57.320 --> 0:14:59.200 is at the center of the universe, and what he 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.680 was talking about was this solar system and he created 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.680 a revolution with that. He still was saying, but it's 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:05.720 all within shells. 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:08.200 It's just everyone's like, that makes a lot more sense. 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:10.000 And then he brings up. 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:13.000 The shells exactly so Copernicus lays it out, and then 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:16.000 Kepler comes along, it's like there's no shells and these 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:19.320 orbits aren't circular, they're elliptical, and he ended up laying 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:21.360 the groundwork for astrophysics to come. 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:24.920 Yeah, you know, it's so easy now that we have 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:30.480 telescopes and beyond, Like, it's hard to even put your 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:33.320 mind in a framework of the only thing you have 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:36.240 is standing on the earth and looking at something with 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:39.120 your eyeballs and trying to take a guess at what's 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:39.880 happening out there. 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:42.640 Yeah, And I think that's what gets lost too, is 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:45.120 when we look back and like poke fun at our 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:48.840 ancient predecessors for being so dumb that like they were 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:51.360 really trying to figure this out with what they had 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:54.880 available at the time. And even if it does seem wacky, 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.680 it's like, can you explain how adams come together to 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:00.960 form a rock hi cans? 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:05.640 That's a good teaser, you know. Yeah, Yeah, I think 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:09.280 it's easy to poke fun of now. But the other 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.840 alternative is they didn't even try, and as we see 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:15.400 time and time again. A lot of the stuff that 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:17.760 they came up with at least led to the next 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:19.760 thing and the next thing. And that's what science is. 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:23.520 So like, hats my toga is off to them. 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:24.800 You took your toga off. 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:30.920 Oh wait a minute, my grapevine atop my head is 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:34.200 off you. All right, my toga is back on. 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:37.240 Okay, because I was gonna say, they're like a helicopter 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:40.200 won't be invented for a thousand plus years. 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:42.960 All right, I think we should take a break now 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:47.360 and we will talk about the idea that the Earth 0:16:47.760 --> 0:17:18.920 is rotating around to central fire right after this, all right. 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:23.000 I promised talk of wackiness before we left, about the 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:27.399 idea that the Earth circled a central fire capital C, 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:32.000 capital F like the big fire. And this was a 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:38.879 thing Pythagoreans, which are the people, the group that you know, 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:43.000 followed in the footsteps of Pythagoras himself in the sixth century. 0:17:43.040 --> 0:17:47.000 They thought that the Earth circled a big central fire, 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:50.480 and not only the Earth, but basically everything, all the planets, 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.439 all the stars, the sun, and the moon, everything circled 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:56.639 around a central fire, and that there was also a 0:17:56.720 --> 0:17:59.960 counter earth, like another earth, and I don't know how 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:00.640 pronounced that. 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:05.080 And titch Thun I think it's Antichthon and Tickson. Yeah, 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:07.159 it's a really odd word. 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:10.920 It is. It's not capitalized, which makes me feel weird. 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:13.240 Yeah, it seems fishy, but that's the name of a 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:16.399 counter earth that's either in the same orbit or in 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.760 its own orbit, but always opposite the Sun from Earth. 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:23.000 Right right, This wasn't something where they were pointing up 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:25.159 in it was Mars unless they called Mars. This is 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:28.800 a hypothetical planet that they were saying was out there, 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:30.879 we just can't see it. And then also with the 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:33.679 Central Fire, they're not saying that was the Sun. The 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:36.960 Sun had its own orbit around the Central Fire. Yeah, 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:41.040 and the Central Fire was unseen because Greece always revolved 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:43.440 in a way, or the Earth always revolved in a 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:46.800 way that Greece was opposite the Central Fire, so it 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:47.679 could never see it. 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.840 Yeah. So there was this guy, uh Philileus. 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:53.280 Probably I think that's exactly right. 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:57.920 Of Croton, which sounds like a planet that would circle 0:18:57.920 --> 0:18:58.320 of fire. 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:00.760 Take me to your leader, Croton. 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:04.760 But Croton was actually in southern Italy and he was 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:08.160 another Greek philosopher. Scientists there were a lot of those guys, 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:12.840 and he was hanging around with Socrates. He was a 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:17.000 pretty prominent Pythagorean. Oh yeah, and he was one of 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:21.840 these guys that put forth this, you know, this idea 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:25.680 even though like they moved away from geocentrism, which is great, 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:29.280 but instead of moving directly into heliocentrism, they moved to 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:30.439 the central fire thing. 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:32.520 First central fire sism. 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:33.520 Yeah. 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:37.280 So yeah, he basically said, there's a central fire, everything 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:40.919 orbits around the central fire, and the all of the 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:46.040 orbits are circular. They love circular orbits, and that the Earth, 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.160 the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets each had 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:52.280 their own orbit. And there was that counter Earth too, 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:57.280 bizarro Earth and Tikman that was opposite Earth at all times. 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.920 That made ten ten orbits altogether. And there are a 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:04.639 couple of reasons for that. One is that to the Pythagoreans, 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.280 ten was a perfect number. So of course there were 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:11.960 ten orbits, but also it explained having that counter Earth, 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:16.840 that tenth orbit explained lunar eclipses because then that meant 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:19.359 that that was just a tick thin shadow being cast 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:20.000 on the Moon. 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:25.520 Yeah. Also to in defense of these sort of wild ideas, 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:29.920 they did have the idea that these orbits, they varied 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:32.240 quite a bit in how long they took. The Earth's 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:34.919 took twenty four hours, the suns took a year, the 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:37.520 moons took a month. And you know, they were on 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:40.639 a right track at that point as far as lunar 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:44.639 orbits and Earth's orbits in the Sun and things like that, 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.120 because they all do take different amounts of time, and 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:50.639 they were pretty on track with the Earth taking twenty 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:54.399 four hours, except the way they describe it was I 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:57.320 think it was more that not the Earth is spinning 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:00.399 on its axis as at orbits the Sun, but more 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.560 like we're really circulating the central fire a lot faster 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:07.200 than the Sun, and we lap the Sun every twenty 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:09.400 four hours, and that's how we have day and night. 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:13.040 It's just so wrong, but you can understand. It's so 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:17.080 fascinating that they had that data, they had that information available, 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:20.320 and they just went the exact wrong direction with it. Yeah, 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:22.639 but again, this is just what this is what they 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:24.960 had available to them at the time. I find that 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:29.480 fascinating that that's how they explained it. It's pretty cool. 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.760 So in this IFL Science article I found, they basically 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:37.560 said it's actually possible, hypothetically for a counter Earth to 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:42.000 exist in the same orbit as Earth, but always opposite Earth, 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:45.320 like traveling at the same rate. We've discovered extra solar 0:21:45.359 --> 0:21:50.119 planets that have that same arrangement, so it's possible, but 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:53.399 it's impossible that there actually is a counter Earth because 0:21:53.920 --> 0:21:56.680 we've run models on it. Our astrophysicists have, I should say, 0:21:56.720 --> 0:22:00.760 you and I haven't, and it would It would affect 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:04.960 other planets. Even just a small counter Earth would affect 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:09.920 other planets orbits very noticeably. Is starting with Venus, and 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:13.440 Venus's orbit is not being affected by any mysterious object, 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:15.760 so there is no counter Earth. That turns out. 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:19.600 That's right, I'm sure. Jim Morrison was very disappointed to 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:24.080 hear that the central fire went away. This all reminded 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:25.080 me of like a door song. 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:26.960 Central fire, Yeah, for sure. 0:22:27.400 --> 0:22:30.320 You know, everything revolving around a central fire a counter earth. 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:34.320 Yeah, yeah, it does kind of seem doors issh also 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:35.320 pink floidy. 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:38.360 Yeah, that's true because the doors didn't get super spacey 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:39.760 as like literal space. 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:43.720 No, but he a central fire sounds Jim Morrison, the 0:22:43.800 --> 0:22:48.600 counter Earth sounds pink floidy. Yeah, you're right, Okay, I'm 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:50.280 glad we finally settled it. 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:52.960 All right, what do we get next? 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:56.080 So another one that I think a lot of people 0:22:56.080 --> 0:23:01.600