Where did our ancestors get their unresearched "facts?"

Factual Questions
1

Before science was really a science, our ancestors believed many things that were never backed up by empirical proof, yet were generally accepted as fact by most and even defended to the point of death by some.

For example, our ancestors believed the Earth was flat, that the sun revolved around the Earth, and that the Earth was the center of the Universe. They believed that heavier objects will fall faster than lighter ones, that the uterus of a woman caused mental illness (hysteria, hysterectomy), and that bloodletting cured many diseases and infirmities. Many of these notions could be disproven with a little bit of experimentation.

How did we come up with these ideas, and why did people so readily believe and defend them? Why was the Catholic Church so ardent in forcing Galileo to recant his writings? How come simple research wasn’t required to prove a scientific claim?

And while we’re on this subject, until the age of modern medicine, home-brewed concoctions were marketed as cure-all remedies. They claimed to cure ailments such as syphilis, gout, headaches, insanity, gastric dysfunction, lycanthropy(!), and others. Even Coca-Cola was originally marketed as a cure-all serum. Did these medicine men just stick random diseases on their labels, or did they really believe that their medicine could cure those specific diseases?
Adam
:eek:

2

The things that you cite as being “facts” that our ancestors believed were actually believed in a wide range of time periods and not all believed at once. For instance, everyone who seriously thought about the issue since at least the time of the ancient Greeks has known that the Earth is a sphere. Indeed, since about 300 A.D. most educated people in Western civilization who read the standard authorities have known the approximate size of the Earth and the approximate size and distance of the moon. You really need to read a good book on the history of science to understand why the theories you mention were believed in at some point (and often for good reasons) and eventually were rejected for good reasons.

3

Which is the obvious conclusion until you look further into the matter. The people who did that knew perfectly well the planet was round.

Also the obvious conclusion.

Well, everything revolved around it, didn’t it?

That’s the way it seems (and it’s often true, although it isn’t the weight of the object that influences the speed).

Many people still today believe in strange differences between men and women that don’t exist.

They had to try something. By the way, modern medicine uses leeches on occasion.

To sum up, in ancient times, not many people had the leisure time to become professional scientists, and they had little reason to.

4

Well, I wasn’t meaning to imply that all of those “facts” were believed at the same time. I was trying to stretch the history of humans with a small sample. :smiley:

I have a book called The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstein. I haven’t read it yet; it’s 713 pages long and I work 50 hours a week, including Saturdays. :wink:

Adam
:eek:

5

Ancestors?!?

People to this day believe in the effectiveness of astrology, homeopathy, and the unsubstantiated claims of all kinds of herbal medicines. They believe that organic produce is healthier. Many believe that the guy on late night TV is really talking to someone’s dead relative. They believe that a guy with two bent rods can find water underground, and that “psychics” are able to help police solve crimes.

Don’t go dissin’ our ancestors when there’s plenty of ignorance right here and now.

6

Doesn’t the earth look flat? It does to me. How long do you think it would take you to walk around the world? Much too long to prove it wasn’t flat.

Sure looks that way too doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you think the same thing if you didn’t know any better? It takes a lot to figure out how things really work, especially when your eyes are one of the biggest ways to get information. What are they going to say about us in a hundred years? Who knows what stuff we know as fact now will be laughed at.

7

People believed that the sun revolved around the earth because that’s what the evidence showed. It was the best theory that fit the evidence they had.

8

This relates to a pet theory of mine regarding Chinese traditional medicine.

In my opinion, the “theories” behind Chinese medicine are a crock. Heatiness and coolth, and chi, and so on.

However, there is some evidence to show that some Chinese medicine has some effect.

My theory is that, since it is so amazingly old in human terms, Chinese medicine has actually evolved - in a blind, organic fashion: a load of random treatments were adopted, and those that killed or harmed the patient were discarded along the way, while ones that were either mildly beneficial, worked as a placebo, or didn’t do anything bad, were retained.

9

Another interesting question is, if we go 2000 years into the future, what widely held contemporary beliefs will seem laughable?

  • Our pitiful attempts to understand the causes of, and best treatment for, cancer.

  • Our theories of the Big Bang and cosmology will almost certainly seem rudimentary and/or ridiculous to our grandchildren. By the end of my life (I unless I get hit by a bus this afternoon or something) I expect a complete revolution in cosmology that will explain dark energy and dark matter in a simple and consistent manner.

  • Psychology? Pah. Especially in the pharmaceutical end. We’re totally groping our way in the dark.

  • Genetics. A science teacher in the year 4029 CE: “In the late 20th century, scientists sequenced the human genome by banging together rocks and stringing together nucleotides with Scotch tape. Awww, aren’t they cute? Observe their primitive, traditional attire, the ‘labb coate.’ They thought they had some clue what it all meant, but now we know that DNA is just one small piece of a much more complicated system of cellular development, and of course we can alter the Recipe of Life at our whim simply by . . .” (Sorry, I’m afraid that as a primitive 21st century citizen I have to stop there. :slight_smile: )

Our ancestors came to their conclusions in roughly the same way we do to ours. They look at the evidence around them, and make their best guess at the reason. Unfortunately, those best guesses tend to get fossilized over time, and people forget that they’re just best guesses and start thinking of them as the Truth.

We counteract this tendency in the modern age by using the Scientific Method. In science, we constantly question our best guesses, and nothing ever gets promoted above the status of best guess! Everything, from the theory of evolution to the theory of general relativity is constantly subject to testing and probing, from its most basic assumptions to its most esoteric details. People think of science as being about new ideas, and that is an important part of it, but the most crucial function of science is getting rid of old and wrong ideas.

10

Same place they alway do–down at the pub.

Cheap booze is not only a brake on scientific advancement, it also makes for a really nasty hangover, the kind that leaves you mean. Hence, political theory.

11

What podkayne said.

Especially, they will be shaking their heads over the foolish ways (whatever they are) we have brought upon ourselves the big increase in asthma and allergies, and in autism.

And the increase in obesity, where everyone knows how not to be obese.

Probably in only 100 years, or even 20 years, or less. Our well-funded methodical scientific approach beats all other methods except pure good luck.

Although, you know, our ancestors were right about an awful lot of things, some of them non-obvious. There have always been observant, methodical, truth-telling people.

12

Actually, in this particular case, the fact that Galileo was right wasn’t obvious. His model wasn’t perfectly accurate (if I’m not mistake he was assuming circular orbits rather than elliptic ones, in particular), so there were discrepancies between observations and what his model would predict.

Conversely, the model used before him was very elaborate so that the major issues raised by an earth-centered system could be explained. The observations matched quite well with this system. There were still discrepancies, but it was thought that they could eventualy be explained.

So, both systems were equally believable, so that even a “scientific” mind couldn’t have just ruled out one or the other out of hand. Heliocentrism had simplicity for him, and the eath-centered system had tradition (and arguably holy scriptures).
AFAIK, the heliocentric model could correctly match the observations and be considered as obviously superior only when the theory of universal gravity came into play.

13

I believe part of the reason people held onto the geocentric universe theory so strongly was religious. Earth was believed to be the most significant astronomical object in the universe, and thus the center. The idea of a heliocentric universe made our planet look no more significant than the other rocks orbiting the sun, except ours is the only one with life… as far as we know.

14

Our attempts to understand the causes of cancer and develop treatments for it are not pitiful. If you mean things like ‘X causes cancer’ (where X = power lines, artificial sweeteners, grill marks, etc.) then yes, that’s pitiful. But a whole lot of research has been done on what causes cancer, and many people would be surprised at how much is actually known. It’s not complete, but I don’t think people in the future will laugh at how wrong we were. There is also a lot of research into cancer treatments that are infinitely more sophisticated than using radiation or toxic compounds that kill cancer cells a bit faster than healthy ones. In fact, I’m surprised we haven’t done better with introducing new treatments.

The genetics thing: We know already that DNA is only a part of cellular development. It’s a fairly major one, but it’s not sufficient to explain, for example, post-translational protein modification, folding and transport. Or maybe it is, since DNA contains the information necessary for the proteins that do this other stuff. We also understand a huge number of biochemical processes. 60 years ago some scientists still thought that proteins were the genetic material, but I don’t think we’re wrong in any major ways now.

Commonly-held but incorrect beliefs would have spread in the past by word-of-mouth. Same as now, but it would be an actual person and not a person on a screen. Many common but incorrect beliefs are more comfortable than the truth; geocentrism results in an anthropocentric universe, heliocentrism plus knowing the stars are flaming balls of gas many light-years away might make some people feel lonely and isolated. Believing in traditional medicines when nothing else is available is more comfortable than admitting that your 16th-century doctor can’t really help you much.

In most cases these incorrect ideas are simple enough to refute, and indeed many were refuted, and educated people didn’t believe them. Religion was important in preventing some truths from spreading, and partly discouraged investigation. But there were still people who had access to knowledge, whether current or ancient, that would bring down their incorrect beliefs. That knowledge is far more accessible now, and far greater, but there are still people who believe things that are flatly wrong. They might believe them because it’s comfortable, because they couldn’t understand the truth, or because they never encountered it. (Many people hear urban legends and believe and repeat them without investigating the truth.)

I do think that science in the 20th century, and especially since 1950, has been right far more often that it has been wrong. Scientists are good at being critical of each other, and incorrect ideas usually get caught. Things that remain unknown are discussed openly and considered challenges rather than failures. There might be a few things in modern science that aren’t strictly correct or that are incomplete (the addition of catalytic RNA to the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology comes to mind). But if you want to find common early-21st-century beliefs that will be ridiculed in 2000 years, I don’t think you’ll find many in our science.

15

Because someone would ask a question of someone whom they thought would know the answer. And this person, wanting to look smart to the other person, would think up a plausible-sounding answer, or just guess. And then expend more effort in sounding like an expert than actually being one, just so he could prove how smart he was. But he was in fact wrong. But did not care.

Sounding familiar yet? It should.

Let’s say the question was “Where do Mice come from?”

Rather than say, “I don’t know, let’s ask someone who does.” The self-appointed expert would prefer to pretend to know, or worse, fool themselves into believing that they could produce an answer from a mishmash of assumptions and simple reasoning. So that’s why people believed that you could create mice by putting some burlap and some grain in a vessel and storing that in a warm, dark place for three weeks.

Still not familiar? Let’s keep going.

So when the real expert came along, one who had spent innumerable hours studying the field of biology and genetics devoted to the scientific method, and said “aha, I have discovered that mice and humans are evolved separately from a common ancestor,” people argued with him, and questioned his sanity. And then, before you knew it, the quest for truth took second or even third rank behind misapplied logic, irrational argument, unscientific analysis, ad hominem attacks, and stupid puns.

Of course, if you haven’t got it yet, I have to hit you over the head with it.

So the real expert would be drowned out by the more vocal majority, “Clearly this person is wrong. Anyone who is not a nutcase knows that mice appear where grain and burlap are stored. Therefore, grain and burlap beget mice. It is simple and obvious reasoning. Only those who wear tinfoil hats would believe that mice and humans are related. Or perhaps this person is a troll; are we being wooshed? Do you have a cite? Our cite says that God created the animals before he created Adam. Maybe mice come from rice, that would be nice.”

The moral of the story is thus: “It is far wiser to remain silent and appear ignorant rather than to post a guess and remove all doubt.”

16

The whole Galileo vs. the Catholic Church thing was ultimately centered around a passage of scripture in the Bible, where a prophet (I forget which one) halted the sun’s progress through the sky during a key battle. The exact wording of the passage implied that it was the sun doing the moving, so geocentrism became an official doctrine.

17

Probably some beliefs, but I would bet — if I were going to be around in 2000 years to collect — that most of our knowledge of the hard sciences will hold up. Roches has already given a good counter-arguments on specific points. Let me make another, more general argument.

Just because we ridicule many of our ancestors’ beliefs doesn’t mean that our descendants will do the same when we’re long gone. For one thing, if that were so, then I presume their descendants would ridicule them after another millennium or two, and then those guys’ descendants would do the same again after another millennium, and on and on. This would mean essentially that nobody is ever right about anything. You never find the truth. There would be no such thing as truth, or at least no truth that humans can ever know.

In which case, there’s no point in trying to understand cancer, or anything else for that matter. Whatever we think we know will always be “laughable”, and wrong.

Far more likely, it seems to me, is that there’s only one reality, only one (possibly enormous) set of rules governing that reality, and that we humans are capable of knowing — truly knowing — at least some of it. While pursuing knowledge of this reality, we are certainly hindered many times by superstition, greed, pride, jealousy, and carelessness, just like our ancestors often were. But that doesn’t mean true knowledge is forever impossible.

Surely one way of seeing that science is probably onto something, that it’s not just some kind of millennial fad or delusion, is to look at all the technology we’ve built — even the horrifying bits, like nuclear weapons. Every time you use a telephone, or fly on an airplane, or look at photos taken by a Mars probe, or even freeze ice cubes in your refrigerator, you are implicitly confirming some of our modern understanding of physics. And every time we successfully treat a disease, like polio or small pox, or even cancer occasionally, we are confirming some of our understanding of biology.

I’m not in biology myself, but my understanding of the “Cancer Problem” is not that it’s an eternal mystery that could turn out to be anything, including gremlins or an imbalance of the humours. I thought that the basic problem was how to kill the cancer without killing the patient — generally considered taboo among professional doctors, or at least a last resort.

18

I’m afraid you have an erroneous idea about the Western religious viewpoint. For several thousand years, educated people have known that the Earth is an insignificant mathematical point in space–Ptolemy and one of the Scipios wrote about it, and they were favorite medieval texts. The relative tininess of the earth was well known. The heliocentric model of the universe, as imagined by Westerners, (crystal spheres, Primum Mobile, aether, etc.) conceived of the Earth at the imperfect, fallen center, where the outside was perfection and light and the music of the spheres. Earth was sort of the garbage can on the universe; everything impure fell downwards towards it.

This was also a poetic vision of the universe; both were blended together. It worked wonderfully well on a metaphorical level. It was finely tuned and beautiful to contemplate; life was found in every level of it (not just the earth) and everything had a place. You could also say (and they did) that the earthly view was warped, and that earth was in fact on the outside, the cold and lonely edge of the universe, while God and everything good were on the inside. You just couldn’t tell, because you couldn’t see it all.

19

Oops. It has been pointed out to me that I meant geocentric, not heliocentric. Sorry.

20

Yes, I can see that as reasonable. But think about how that “knowledge” may be viewed in the light of things that are yet unknown. Things are sculpted and refined and redefined like a work of art.

I like evidence, even when it is not proof – the almost, but not quite knowing.