Ancient wisdom often sounds like common sense now that it is commomly taught. What is some ancient wisdom that we no longer teach because it was wrong?
Ancient wisdom often sounds like common sense now that it is commomly taught. What is some ancient wisdom that we no longer teach because it was wrong?
This question inspired by this post..
Aristotle was obviously a great teacher and philosopher but he ended up being wrong about a lot. Like he thought the “elements” were earth, wind, fire, and water and that all objects want to be in their “natural” place. So, if you drop a rock, it tries to return to the earth. Fire goes up because it’s trying to get to where it “wants” to live.
He thought eels didn’t procreate because no one had ever seen it happening. (They go out to sea to fuck.) He was into bees and correctly noticed that there were workers and drones and that young bees grow out of the honeycomb. But he just assumed the Queen was a King and that worker bees were out collecting tiny baby bees from flowers. (He thought the air just blew pollen around and the honey naturally appeared.)
He had a lot of ideas that were just ideas but he was so influential and his writings were preserved and translated. It took a shocking number of years for people to question if Aristotle was full of shit.
Lightning never strikes the same place twice. In fact it favors repeated strikes at the same arcing point.
In the middle ages churches would ring the steeple bells during a thunderstorm in an effort to soothe God. (it was assumed the Christian God was directly responsible for lightning.) This resulted in such an epidemic of lightning deaths among parish priests that ringing church bells in thunderstorms remains a criminal act in some regions of Europe.
Modern cathedrals and statues are fitted with replaceable lightning rods, in an admission God is content to let the mechanics of static electricity guide His thunderbolts.
Phlogiston, its where heat comes from!
Babylonian astronomy
HEAD ON APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!
That there is an invisible structure all around us that allows gravity, light and electricity to move through it. Now debunked or replaced.
Trepanning to release evil spirits.
Drill a hole in your head as a cureall for any mental behaviour abnormalities. Still practised as an emergency surgery, only to release life-threatening blood and pressure buildup inside the cranial cavity.
Gut pain? Almost drowned? Time to blow some tobacco smoke up your bum. Discontinued.
The bible.
Medicine and not taking anything as the will of god you should just accept, this and perception of death. That direct war, colonies are necessary - because now soft power, investments, influence, proxies are seen as more effective and better for business. That raw physical fitness means an easy superiority - and not a gun. Slavery and serfdom took other forms, so are associated stereotypes. Talking while seemingly alone is, arguably, not a solid sign of a mental illness now. First paleness became no longer a wanted trait, then we learnt that sun tan can be bad too. Putting fire to a field or a property isn't a good idea like it was before. Natural resources are free, limitless and harvested with no consequencies. Finding a stash of gold isn't that tempting too. Mass production, services kind off changed the amount of skills one needs in an average household and added complexity to it. Knowledge of how to get a clean water noticeably changed our ways. And perception of sex and family in different cultures drastically changed over time due to religion, law and science.
That there is a god (or gods)
Anyone reading this thread and genuinely interested in it should go listen to the dollop podcast. It's American history, mostly between the 1500's and now. But the different episodes they do are stuffed full of this kind of faulty logic from the past.
Blood letting. Have a fever, must be to much blood inside you.
What goes up comes back down.
Apply math and the object flies in a parabolic arc (not accounting for air friction and wind)
Launch it high enough and the arc start looking elliptical. Gravitational force looks less like a constant rather is tempered by distance². If the acceleration closes the ellipse without hitting the (circular at this scale) ground, your object is now a satellite in orbit.
Keep accelerating and eventually (a whole lot of acceleration) and special relativity factors affect the trajectory...and mass...and time dilates between the object and observers.
That a vomitorium is a room where Romans would go to vomit up their food and drink so they could gorge themselves some more.
Not saying that this act never occurred, mind you.
A vomitorium is a architectural feature that allows large numbers of people to disperse from a tunnel under the seats of a stadium.
opposites attract
The best thing to do when grandma dies is to keep her body under your bed!
Almost anything disease-related, E.G. humors.
The geocentric theory.
I don't know if anyone else has said it, but the belief that human illness and all that were caused by an imbalance of four bodily humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. It's an old belief where the earliest I found it being practiced was around 400 B.C.
Traveling faster than a horse is harmful.The body waa not made for that speed.
Plus for any saying like "look before you leap" there's a "the early bird gets the worm"
