# How much did people know about stuff, and when did they know it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 22, 2007, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574 "2007-08-22T23:05:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/21 "2007-08-24T02:12:33Z")
By 300 A.D., the size of the Moon and its distance from the Earth were known to within 10%. ---
**Author:** ![shimmery](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@shimmery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shimmery)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/22 "2007-08-24T10:10:15Z")
[QUOTE=VCO3] I guess I’m just more curious as to how that stuff “trickles down” to the common person throughout history. I mean, Ma Ingalls had no formal education in any sense - we’re talking about a rural, backwoods, chicken-pluckin’ yokel. I’m curious as to how the information slowly trickles down to a person like that. [/QUOTE] I think part of the reason that most of the replies in this thread are discussing what was _known to man_ at certain points of history, rather than what was _common knowledge_ at different times, is because the latter is much more difficult to get at historically. One way of investigating this would be to check out journals and diaries of average people (or not so average, whatever) from the time you’re interested in. Of course, even then, you would be much more likely to find out what people knew than how they managed to find it out. Old newspapers and periodicals can also provide clues about common assumptions and views people had about the world around them. It’s a fascinating historical question, though. I took an archaeology class recently about pre-European civilizations in the Americas, and this was one of the questions that bothered me the most. I was disappointed to learn that it’s very hard - maybe impossible - to answer through archaeological means. ETA: I don’t have any specific recommendations of diaries or newspapers that might be of particular interest. I don’t suppose you have access to a friendly local research librarian? ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/23 "2007-08-24T11:09:19Z")
The New York Times in 1860 mentions the “commonly receive[d] opinion that there is no water on the surface of the moon.” ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/24 "2007-08-24T11:15:24Z")
The New York Times in 1873 calls the moon “a dead, decaying planet.” ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/25 "2007-08-24T11:25:04Z")
The New York Times in 1874: > [@](#): > > Prof. RIchard A. Proctor lectured yesterday afternoon at Association Hall on “Life in Other Worlds” before a large audience, chiefly composed of ladies.… He exhibited pictures of the moon in its various conditions, stating that they could discover no such sort of surface as they found on the earth for the support of life. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/26 "2007-08-24T11:33:36Z")
The New York Times again in 1874: > [@](#): > > **Some Ideas About the Moon**. — Looking at the very beautiful photographs and heliotypes of lunar objects contained in a recent work, one might say that ordinary inquirers are for the first time presented with pictures of the moon’s surface so minute and intelligible as to give a clear idea of what our satellite is really like. Though poets, perhaps, may not like it, the veil of mystery is torn from the moon. It is at length disclosed to us to be a great barren waste of rugged mountains and extinct volcanos, the whole devoid of air, water, vegetation, or animal life — a rocky solitude going without intermission drearily around the earth. . . ---
**Author:** ![Lunar\_Saltlick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/977dab/32.png) [@Lunar\_Saltlick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lunar_Saltlick)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/27 "2007-08-24T12:44:42Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] The old saw that a medieval scholar could learn everything that was known is kind of true, but only in a limited sense. It was true that one person could probably read every book written in Latin that existed in Europe. But that medieval scholar certainly wasn’t reading books from China, or India, or Japan, let alone codices from the Americas. And of course, merely reading every book in existance isn’t the same thing as knowing everything known, because lots of knowledge that existed at that time wasn’t written in books. Guild secrets, masonic secrets, political secrets, not to mention the sorts of mundane everyday knowlege that is never written down, or if written down is only kept in local tax records…that William Johnson of Bristol had 12 chickens and married Elizibeth Baker on June 23 1394, and had 3 children, and the oldest child had a bad case of sniffles last January, and so on. [/QUOTE] The old saw I’ve heard significantly qualifies the situation, stating that Leonardo was the last person in history to have known pretty much all there was to know _that was possible_ for a person to know. In other words, he’s generally off the hook for not knowing about, say, the exact dates of the origins of certain Chinese spices. Supposedly, he knew pretty much all he could know about science, art, engineering, literature, politics, history, etc., but in a general way, not in encyclopedic fashion, and not necessarily globally. Once you qualify it enough, you can probably make a case for it, though I’m certainly not going to try. I’ve heard other people say it was Jefferson, others say it was Franklin, and still others claim it was Sam Pepys, the old letch. As for the OP, who knows? There are plenty of highly educated people today who have absolutely no idea what’s up with the moon. They don’t understand why it’s not always visible at night, why it’s usually not visible during the day, but sometimes is, a little bit, and why sometimes one part is lit up and then a few nights later… ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/28 "2007-08-24T13:08:24Z")
[QUOTE=plnnr] Would it have been possible for some person in the distant pass to have essentially known everything that was knowable at the time? For instance, could a particularly well educated scribe or priest (I’m assuming they tended to be the best educated) of the ancient world, having access to what passed for the best information of his age, known it all? [/QUOTE] People believed it was possible - they even had a name for them: [Renaissance men](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath). ---
**Author:** ![plnnr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/29 "2007-08-24T13:12:42Z")
[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig] By the late Nineteenth Century, … it was unusual for anyone, male or female, to have had absolutely **no** education (except perhaps among the very lowest rungs of society), and the rudiments of science were covered in school. [/QUOTE] I’m not so sure of this. In doing genealogical research for my family I’ve had the opportunity to look at quite a bit of Census data from the 19th Century, and one of the questions asked was “Can person read or write?” There were still very, very many people who did not have these skills. Of course, perhaps the “very lowest rungs of society” were bigger then or it could have been the communities I was interested in just had undereducated people (the communities tended to be rural and agrarian). My grandfather, for instance, was born in 1882 and could neither read nor write until my aunt taught him to sign his name with something other than in “X.” She did this in the 1940s. ---
**Author:** ![plnnr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/30 "2007-08-24T13:42:44Z")
The following links gives illiteracy rates in the US from 1870: > **[National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) - 120 Years of Literacy](https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp)** > > Presents information from 1869-70-the date of the first Office of Education report-to the late 1970s on. The creation of the Federal Department of Education in 1867 highlighted the importance of education. In 1870 the illiteracy rate in the US for whites over 14 was 20%. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/31 "2007-08-24T14:46:12Z")
[QUOTE=Lunar Saltlick] The old saw I’ve heard significantly qualifies the situation, stating that Leonardo was the last person in history to have known pretty much all there was to know _that was possible_ for a person to know. … Once you qualify it enough, you can probably make a case for it, though I’m certainly not going to try. I’ve heard other people say it was Jefferson, others say it was Franklin, and still others claim it was Sam Pepys, the old letch. [/QUOTE] Or Batman. He knows a lot of stuff. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/32 "2007-08-24T15:24:27Z")
Regarding the moon – John Herschel (the son of the guy who discovered Uranus, and a major scientific figure himself) wrote a popular book about astronomy circa 1835 that was widely read. The “Moon Hoax” that ran in the New York Sun and Edgar Allen Poe’s own “Unparalleled Adventures of Hans Pfall” added popular interest, both when they ran, and in the debunking. That stuff made it into popular science books and Christmas annuals and encyclopedias for years afterwards. There was quite a bit of popular interest in science, and many outlets for such information. Read Poe’s works like “Some Words with a Mummy”, or :The Tale of the Thousand and Second Night’ for popular treatments of this stuff. Heck, by the time of that Little house episode, Verne had already published his “From the Earth to the Moon” (and its sequel “Around the Moon”, which contains all you’d need to know , and its less well-known second sequel “The Purchase of the North Pole” aka “Topsy Turvy”.) ---
**Author:** ![Lunar\_Saltlick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/977dab/32.png) [@Lunar\_Saltlick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lunar_Saltlick)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/33 "2007-08-24T15:46:13Z")
[QUOTE=JThunder] Or Batman. He knows a lot of stuff. [/QUOTE] Yeah, but he’s a model citizen, and thus a crashing bore. The other guys were loads of laughs, especially Pepys, who married a very lively curiosity to a very lively yard, the randy old dodger. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/34 "2007-08-24T15:48:55Z")
I will take the simple backwoods farmer explanation: Stuff that grows is green. The moon is gray. Therefore we can conclude nothing grows there. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/35 "2007-08-24T16:14:21Z")
[QUOTE=tdn] Back in the day, it was essential to survival to just be an expert in the field. If you didn’t know farming, you died. And that takes precious time away for more esoteric study. [/QUOTE] So. What you’re saying is, a farmer has to be outstanding in his field? Ow, ow, ow! ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/36 "2007-08-24T16:30:44Z")
[QUOTE=plnnr] The following links gives illiteracy rates in the US from 1870: > **[National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) - 120 Years of Literacy](https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp)** > > Presents information from 1869-70-the date of the first Office of Education report-to the late 1970s on. The creation of the Federal Department of Education in 1867 highlighted the importance of education. In 1870 the illiteracy rate in the US for whites over 14 was 20%. [/QUOTE] Which means 80% of the population could read, that’s actually pretty damn impressive to me. > [@Liberal](#): > > As a child, I was also a rural, backwoods, chicken-pluckin’ yokel. Information has trickled down to me through reading. Yeah, keep in mind a lot of guys like Lincoln became smart men because they _really wanted to_, it wasn’t as easy as it was for wealthy people who lived in cities and went to the best schools. But it was doable, Lincoln read every book he could get his hands on as a child (which wasn’t a small number, even growing up in the relative frontier of civilization at the time), he read newspapers vociferously and et cetera. Basically he made a serious effort to become educated and informed, and he was capable of doing so, despite being a “backwoods yokel.” ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/37 "2007-08-24T16:37:39Z")
[QUOTE=Liberal] Today, I’ve seen people, on this very board, claim that scientific testing can prove that one plus one equals two. [/QUOTE] Yup. Still haven’t changed my mind about it either. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/38 "2007-08-24T16:58:37Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] The “Moon Hoax” that ran in the New York Sun and Edgar Allen Poe’s own “Unparalleled Adventures of Hans Pfall” added popular interest, both when they ran, and in the debunking. [/QUOTE] That’s what I was going to mention (Damn You Meaaaaachaaaaaam!). The [hoax](http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/moonhoax.html) (a series of articles about high-power telescopes seeing herds of buffalo and tribes and palaces on the moon) was swallowed hook/line/sinker by many, even among the educated classes. From that link: > [@](#): > > Yale College was alive with staunch supporters. The literati—students and professors, doctors in divinity and law—and all the rest of the reading community, looked daily for the arrival of the New York mail with unexampled avidity and implicit faith. Have you seen the accounts of Sir John Herschel’s wonderful discoveries? Have you read the Sun? Have you heard the news of the man in the Moon? These were the questions that met you every where. It was the absorbing topic of the day. Nobody expressed or entertained a doubt as to the truth of the story. Because it was such a huge story, the debunking with “it’s a great big cold rock” was equally huge, and Caroline or her parents would have known of this as the hoax and the “CITE?” editorials and the retraction/confession were reprinted all over America and Europe. Plus in the apocryphal _Little House_ book, _Little House on the Edge of Forever_, Laura discusses her father’s timespace portal in a bard in DeSmet, South Dakota. For a time he was actually elected god emperor of a race of locust like obelisk builders from a dimension located only near Bellatrix on ninth Wednesdays. ETA: PS: The new cover art on the LH books is abomination. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/39 "2007-08-24T17:01:47Z")
Sequel: _A Wrinkle in Gingham_. ---
**Author:** ![plnnr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574/40 "2007-08-24T17:02:27Z")
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde] Which means 80% of the population could read, that’s actually pretty damn impressive to me. [/QUOTE] Perhaps, but it still deflates **Freddy the Pig’s** argument that by the late 19th Century it was “unusual” for someone to have no education. Having a fifth of the population over 14 illiterate wouldn’t make it exactly “unusual.” (And the illiteracy rate for blacks was 80% - not surprisingly). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-did-people-know-about-stuff-and-when-did-they-know-it/416574.md?page=3)