4 Things We Believed Before the Scientific Method
Info: Science is having a great season. The scientific method has flown us to the moon, extended the average human lifespan and put the Internet in our pockets. But before we got here, even some brilliant thinkers had some really weird ideas.
Bodily humors! Feeling a little off? Hmmm… maybe you need to adjust your phlegm-to-black-bile ratio? Ancient physicians like Hippocrates thought that a person’s health and temperament was determined by four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, choler (or yellow bile) and melancholy (or black bile). Amazingly, this idea still held influence in Western medicine through the Middle Ages and even after – you can thank this concept for enemas.
Spontaneous generation! This would be so creepy if it were true: Spontaneous generation was the widely-held belief that animals and other complex life forms would appear out of masses of lifeless matter in the right circumstances. For example, the 17th century Flemish physician Jan Baptista van Helmont made the keen observation that a sweaty shirt placed in a container of wheat would sprout mice within 21 days. How else could you possibly explain the presence of mice in a container of food left out for three weeks? He also claimed that basil pressed between two bricks would transform into a scorpion.
The Miasma Theory of Disease. When there were outbreaks of cholera in London in the mid-1800s, the English epidemiologist William Farr explained them with the conventional theory of the day: the miasma theory, which said that diseases were caused not by germs but by foul-smelling air and “night vapors.” Another English physician named John Snow was skeptical of this explanation, and the miasma theorists were all like ‘You know nothing John Snow,” until finally Snow conclusively traced the outbreaks to a public water pump that was drawing water chock full of cholera-infected raw sewage. Score one for germ theory.
Aristotelian Physics. Just one example: The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, one of the most revered intellectuals in history, wrote that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object. Almost 2,000 years went by before Galileo Galilei smashed this hypothesis to pieces. When air resistance is put aside, all falling objects accelerate toward earth at the same constant rate. Legend says Galileo dropped cannonballs from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to test his idea, but nobody knows if this story is true. Either way, Aristotle fans ate crow.
What’s the weirdest obsolete science fact you’ve ever heard? Let us know in the comments and subscribe! And check out more crazy facts about the history of proto-science by reading 10 Things We Thought Were True Before the Scientific Method at HowStuffWorks!...
Bodily humors! Feeling a little off? Hmmm… maybe you need to adjust your phlegm-to-black-bile ratio? Ancient physicians like Hippocrates thought that a person’s health and temperament was determined by four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, choler (or yellow bile) and melancholy (or black bile). Amazingly, this idea still held influence in Western medicine through the Middle Ages and even after – you can thank this concept for enemas.
Spontaneous generation! This would be so creepy if it were true: Spontaneous generation was the widely-held belief that animals and other complex life forms would appear out of masses of lifeless matter in the right circumstances. For example, the 17th century Flemish physician Jan Baptista van Helmont made the keen observation that a sweaty shirt placed in a container of wheat would sprout mice within 21 days. How else could you possibly explain the presence of mice in a container of food left out for three weeks? He also claimed that basil pressed between two bricks would transform into a scorpion.
The Miasma Theory of Disease. When there were outbreaks of cholera in London in the mid-1800s, the English epidemiologist William Farr explained them with the conventional theory of the day: the miasma theory, which said that diseases were caused not by germs but by foul-smelling air and “night vapors.” Another English physician named John Snow was skeptical of this explanation, and the miasma theorists were all like ‘You know nothing John Snow,” until finally Snow conclusively traced the outbreaks to a public water pump that was drawing water chock full of cholera-infected raw sewage. Score one for germ theory.
Aristotelian Physics. Just one example: The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, one of the most revered intellectuals in history, wrote that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object. Almost 2,000 years went by before Galileo Galilei smashed this hypothesis to pieces. When air resistance is put aside, all falling objects accelerate toward earth at the same constant rate. Legend says Galileo dropped cannonballs from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to test his idea, but nobody knows if this story is true. Either way, Aristotle fans ate crow.
What’s the weirdest obsolete science fact you’ve ever heard? Let us know in the comments and subscribe! And check out more crazy facts about the history of proto-science by reading 10 Things We Thought Were True Before the Scientific Method at HowStuffWorks!...
0 comments for "4 Things We Believed Before the Scientific Method "