Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: How the Scientific Method Works About this episode It evolved over centuries to become the gold standard for conducting scientific inquiry. Yet many people - including some scientists - don't fully understand it. Learn about the basis of how we explore our world in this episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:04 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford ability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder that Capital One Bank Guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums.
0:45 Josh Clark? He'd also tell you about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bankguy. Capital One, N A, Member FDIC. When you're in do-it-yourself mode, the last thing you want to do is drop everything to pick up that one part or tool that you need. That's where My Lowe's Rewards and My Lowe's Pro Rewards come in. Place your order and Lowe's handles the rest. Lowe's will make the run for you with free same-day delivery. Members get more at Lowe's. $25 minimum and loyalty membership required. Order eligible items by 2 P M.
1:28 Josh Clark? Subject to weight and size restrictions and availability. Terms at Lowe's.com/shippingterms.
1:35 Speaker 02 Hey, everybody. We're up to, I think, number five on the list of our science playlist. And this is a good one. Things We Believe Before the Scientific Method. I remember really enjoying this one, so I hope you dive in right now.
1:49 Speaker 03 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:59 Josh Clark? Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the Let's Get Jiggy with Science Edition.
2:11 Josh Clark? You know you're about to get jiggy Chuck.
2:14 Speaker 02 With it?
2:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, with it. And it is this episode about what people believed before the scientific method.
2:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, you know, we have a pretty good episode on the scientific method. And we have talked about some of this stuff here and there throughout the years. Like, you know, early science and it's easy to make fun of that stuff.
2:35 Josh Clark? Right.
2:36 Speaker 02 But we are here not to make fun of it and not necessarily to defend it, but to just put it into perspective of where these people were at the time. And you can see how a lot of this stuff made sense at the time.
2:50 Josh Clark? See, that was as jiggy as it comes.
2:54 Speaker 02 All right. See you later.
2:56 Josh Clark? Yeah, that was really well put. And just as a refresher real quick, so you don't have to pause and go back and listen to our scientific method episode. You can if you want, but if you don't feel like doing that, the scientific method is just basically a plan to keep yourself from going down blind alleys or being misled by what seems to be the case, but isn't necessarily the case. Sometimes your own eyes can lie to you. And it basically says is like, based on, you know, data you've, you've collected or things you've observed, form a hypothesis, like this happens because of this. Figure out how to test it, test it, look at the results. Did it support the hypothesis? Did it not support the hypothesis? And either keep going forward or go back to square one.
3:40 Josh Clark? And by testing it, that's where the scientific method really shines. And before the scientific method, people didn't do that. They used their eyes, the empiricists, they formed theories, the rationalists or dogmatists. They performed experiments, the methodists is really what they called them. But they didn't actually like test this stuff. And so they were able to create these theories that were totally wrong. Sometimes were really right, but in a lot of cases were really wrong. And that those things were adopted for like thousands of years in some cases.
4:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, because a lot of science was mixed up with philosophy for a long, long time. And as you'll see with some of these, like, if you had a good enough sort of philosophical thought about something and other people said, "Hey, that makes sense," and you kept repeating it a lot, then, at the time, people were like, "Well, that's good enough for us."
4:37 Josh Clark? Yeah, which meant also, if philosophy was in there, you had to also, it had to explain why, more than be reliably consistent in its results.
4:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
4:47 Josh Clark? So, one of the first ones that I think people think of when they think of ancient science is the four humors, the humors of medicine, which was something that came along from Hippocrates, all the way back in, I think, the fourth or fifth century BCE, and was in place until the 1600s, essentially. That was how people practiced medicine.
5:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, that's a long run. Hippocrates probably did not make it up himself. It's theorized that he probably brought it over, or he didn't necessarily, but it was brought over to the Greeks, maybe from India, maybe from Egypt. But Hippocrates ran with it, and then Galen really ran with it. And Galen is who is, probably, most people think of Galen when they think of the humors, the four humors.
5:40 Josh Clark? Right.
5:41 Speaker 02 But humor, H-U-M-O-R, is Latin meaning fluid, and that's basically what they're talking about with the four humors, almost said humid, the four humors, which are the fluids of the body, and we should just name them quickly, I think.
5:58 Josh Clark? Yeah.
5:59 Speaker 02 Phlegm, you got blood, and then you got the two bile. You got black bile and yellow bile.
6:07 Josh Clark? Right. And those things are not just the sum total of what was studied, or what was responsible for ill health or for health. They almost stood in for a bunch of other things, too. Like, your energy could be low, or angry, or overly happy, and all those were associated with different humors, right? So, I think it was Palomar University website on it, basically put it like, more than just fluids themselves, you could think of the humors as those things that flow, fluids, energy, that kind of stuff.
6:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:43 Josh Clark? And all these humors also had complexions. They had, they were either wet, or dry, cold, or hot. And there were combinations of those.
6:53 Speaker 02 But not, that's not literally that.
6:56 Josh Clark? No.
6:56 Speaker 02 It's a little confusing.
6:57 Josh Clark? It's super duper confusing. And I think this is an example of what happens when people over a couple thousand years kind of contribute to stuff, it gets a little off kilter.
7:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, like blood is hot and wet, but that didn't necessarily mean they're saying that when you touch blood, it was hot to the touch.
7:15 Josh Clark? Right.
7:15 Speaker 02 It's almost like, uh, what, a synesthesia approach.
7:21 Josh Clark? Right.
7:21 Speaker 02 To the body.
7:22 Josh Clark? Yeah, well put. So like water is cold, boiling water is cold, ice is hot. I don't understand some of it.
7:31 Speaker 02 What?
7:32 Josh Clark? Exactly, right? So the upshot of it was is that the each humor was, um, hot and hot or, um, it had a temperature and a humidity.
7:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:43 Josh Clark? Hot or cold, wet or dry. And depending on what symptoms you had, you either had like a a hot and wet, um, disease, right? Or a cold and dry disease.
7:55 Speaker 02 That sounds better.
7:56 Josh Clark? The treatment was to, um, use the opposite. So I think pneumonia was cold and wet because it came on during the winter, which is very cold and wet around the Mediterranean at the time. And you would treat that with something, um, warm and dry. So herbs were warm and dry. You would treat, use herbs to treat pneumonia. And the whole pursuit was just to regain balance. Each person had a, a pre, um, I guess ordained balance of those four humors. And when they got out of whack, that's when you were, you know, you came down with the disease.
8:30 Speaker 02 Yeah. So you, you've heard about, uh, you know, forcing yourself to vomit. Um, or, you know, the bleeding, the old great Steve Martin sketch from Saturday Night Live years ago, you just need a good bleeding. That's what they were doing. They were trying to get you back into balance by removing whatever humor they thought, you know, either the phlegm or the blood thought would, you needed, you had an excess of at the time to bring you back into homeostasis. So they were, again, they were wrong, but you know, things like homeostasis, they were on the right track with some of this, some of these ideas at least.
9:06 Josh Clark? For sure. Yeah. And that's, I think, kind of a recurring theme in this. When you look in on ancient science and ancient knowledge, it's like, they kind of had like the contours of some of these. And that's a good example of that, I thought.
9:18 Speaker 02 Contours.
9:19 Josh Clark? Exactly. So it wasn't until Paracelsus, who came up, I think, in our xenobiotics episode. When he came along, he was definitely an outlier and an outsider thinker. And he was like, I think Galen was just really wrong. This stuff just doesn't quite add up.
9:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:38 Josh Clark? And I think William Harvey, who was an English, I think, physician, in 1616, he showed that the heart pumps blood. And that just completely undermined the humoral medicine thought that these, these humors moved around the body through attractive forces.
9:56 Speaker 02 Yeah. And, and you know, again, this is one of those, kind of what I said in the intro, like, this is one of those that people believed and got on board with because it made sense at the time. It was something that they were very persistent about. And if you're persistent about something, even if it wasn't proven at the time, that was, that was enough for people. It was the consistency of sort of the idea that's repeated over and over that got people on board for a long time, hundreds of years.
10:27 Josh Clark? Yeah. And I think it's interesting, like, the humoral medicine is still one of the foundations of Ayurvedic medicine from India. And that's why they think it might have come from India originally to Greece. But the basis of it is that you use like movement and diet to keep your humors in balance. And that was kind of the basis of the Greek interpretation too. But then they took it too far and, and started using it to treat disease and doing all sorts of weird stuff. So now we have modern medicine and modern medicine likes to disown its predecessors, but it wouldn't be here if we didn't have things like humoral medicine first.
11:06 Speaker 02 Up with Galen.
11:08 Josh Clark? Why not?
11:11 Speaker 02 You have sneakily not mentioned that this is a top five.
11:15 Josh Clark? Oh, that's right. It's a top five, maybe part one of a top 10. Who knows?
11:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, we'll see. Should we try and knock out the next one?
11:24 Josh Clark? Yeah, I say that. I say so. I agree. That's what I say.
11:28 Speaker 02 All right, this one's interesting, and this has to do with...
11:33 Speaker 02 It sounds a little wacky, but again, you have to keep in mind where they were at the time. So this is the idea put forth by... How do you pronounce that name?
11:45 Josh Clark? I'm going with Edoxis. Eudoxis.
11:51 Speaker 02 Eudoxis?
11:52 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think Eudoxis.
11:53 Speaker 02 All right. Eudoxis of Nidos was born between 395 and 390 B.C.C. Lived to kind of early to mid 50s. And he came along and said, "All right, I've got some pretty radical things to throw out there that are fivefold. Part one, the Earth is the center of the universe."
12:13 Josh Clark? Check.
12:14 Speaker 02 And everyone was like, "Sounds reasonable." And it was reasonable at the time, and we'll talk about that in a second. Number two, all celestial motion is circular.
12:22 Josh Clark? Roger.
12:23 Speaker 02 Number three, all celestial motion is regular. Number four, the center of the path of any celestial motion is the same as the center of its motion.
12:33 Josh Clark? All right.
12:33 Speaker 02 And then number five, the center of all celestial motion is the center of the universe. And I said, you know, he can't be blamed for that first one, even though he was wrong about geocentrism. At the time, when you stood on the planet and you looked up and you saw, you know, stars sort of moving and other things moving in a circle around the Earth, you probably felt like you were the center of the universe.
12:59 Josh Clark? Exactly. I mean, it would just make sense. You'd be a fool to think otherwise because there's no indication that the Earth itself is also moving. It seems like everything else is moving around the Earth. So it's not so far-fetched to think that, "Oh, the Earth is the center of the universe." Part of it also tied into that natural philosophy thing where humans were the center of the universe. They were like the creation of the gods. And of course, why would Earth be anything but the center of the universe? But it also had to do with practical stuff like what they saw with their own eyes.
13:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, like he wasn't the first person to come up with this. Like this had been around for a long, long time and he was just sort of officially reaffirming it.
13:36 Josh Clark? But he was the first person to give us a model of of the movement of the cosmos, celestial bodies moving through the sky and trying to explain it. And somebody who came before him, Anaximenes, I'm going with that. He was the first one to say, hey, I've got it. This is back in the 6th century BCE. It's shells. Everything exists in shells, man.
14:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, the idea that like, I mean, it almost sounds like he was creating little miniature galaxies. And like, everything we see is contained inside its own little miniature galaxy, like literally contained in a shell.
14:23 Josh Clark? Yes, but all of these shells are rotating in different orbits around Earth.
14:29 Speaker 02 Right, but they can affect one another, right? Or did that come along later?
14:34 Josh Clark? That came along with Eudoxus. So Anaximenes basically said it's shells. And then Eudoxus was the first one to really lay out an explanation, a theory for how these shells worked. And I think he came up with 27 different shells. Some shells had shells within shells. It got really kind of crazy. But the point of this isn't like because Eudoxus was mad or anything like that. He had to keep adding shells to explain things they saw in the night sky.
15:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, so it's almost like they dug themselves a bit of a hole. And instead of course correcting and saying, well, maybe we should look into a different theory or something. They were just like, kept adding shells.
15:16 Josh Clark? Exactly. So one of the big problems was that, first of all, the Earth is not the center of the universe. But also that the motion of celestial bodies is not circular and it's not regular.
15:29 Speaker 02 He was wrong on everything.
15:30 Josh Clark? He was basically wrong, yeah, on all five of those points. But.
15:36 Josh Clark? The reason that he thought it was circular was that circles were perfect. And again, the earth was the center of the universe and it was created by the God. So of course it was perfect. But other people have pointed out that it had to be circular if he was going to apply math, because non-circular math for movement hadn't really been created yet.
15:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:57 Josh Clark? That's basically, that's all he had to work with was circular motion. So if he was going to actually investigate this and try to figure it out with math, it had to be circular. So just by what he had available at the time, that's why this motion was supposedly circular. But that was a huge boondoggle because it's not circular. As we found out finally from Kepler, who came along, I think the 17th century. So again, this is like 2,000 years. People are like, shells is where it's at. Even Copernicus, who said, he was the first one to really say, the sun is at the center of the universe. And what he was talking about was the solar system. And he created a revolution with that. He still was saying, but it's all within shells.
16:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, everyone's like, that makes a lot more sense. And then he brings up the shells.
16:44 Josh Clark? Exactly. So Copernicus lays it out and then Kepler comes along and is like, there's no shells and these orbits aren't circular, they're elliptical. And he ended up laying the groundwork for astrophysics to come.
16:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, you know, it's so easy now that we have telescopes and beyond. Like it's hard to even put your mind in a framework of the only thing you have is standing on the earth and looking at something with your eyeballs and trying to take a guess at what's happening out there.
17:14 Josh Clark? Yeah. And I think that's what gets lost too, is when we look back and like poke fun at our ancient predecessors for being so dumb, that like they were really trying to figure this out with what they had available at the time. And even if it does seem wacky, it's like, can you explain how atoms come together to form a rock? I can't.
17:35 Speaker 02 That's a good teaser.
17:36 Josh Clark? You know?
17:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think it's easy to poke fun of now, but the other alternative is they didn't even try. And as we see time and time again, a lot of the stuff that they came up with at least led to the next thing and the next thing. And that's what science is. So like, my toga is off to them.
17:58 Josh Clark? You took your toga off?
17:59 Speaker 02 Oh, wait a minute. My grapevine atop my head is off.
18:05 Josh Clark? There you go.
18:06 Speaker 02 All right. My toga's back on.
18:08 Josh Clark? OK, good. Because I was going to say they're like, a helicopter won't be invented for 1,000-plus years.
18:15 Speaker 02 All right. I think we should take a break now, and we will talk about the idea that the Earth is rotating around a central fire, right after this.
18:40 Speaker 04 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
18:43 Josh Clark? Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.
18:46 Speaker 02 That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T. And he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
19:02 Speaker 04 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
19:10 Josh Clark? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
19:16 Speaker 05 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
19:21 Speaker 02 And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
19:25 Speaker 05 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.
19:29 Speaker 04 What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
19:33 Josh Clark? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.
19:36 Speaker 06 Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
19:43 Speaker 02 You know, you're never done decorating your home. You know what I mean?
19:45 Josh Clark? Sure.
19:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do or buy or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly. It's usually a new rug.
19:56 Josh Clark? Well, Chuck, whether you need a rug or whatever is next for you, you can go to Wayfair. It's the smart place to get it.
20:03 Speaker 02 That's right. Whatever your style, whatever your budget, whatever you're looking for, Wayfair makes it easy to find it. And you can feel good about your purchases too, because Wayfair verified products go through a thorough 10-point quality inspection.
20:15 Josh Clark? And with over 20 million five-star reviews, Wayfair must be doing something right. You can find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com.
20:38 Josh Clark? In Orlando, meetings reach another level. Thanks to a growing list of award-winning restaurants, a world-class convention center, a great hotel community, easy access through the airport, and of course, the weather. Andrew Moyes, VP of Fan Expo HQ, had this to say about Orlando. Luxury hotels, Michelin restaurants, easy access through the airport, all of those key things feed into the proper executive experience. And while you may know Orlando for its attractions, industries like healthcare, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing make it a hub for cutting-edge businesses. And that's what makes Orlando unbelievably real. Learn more at orlandoforbusiness.com.
21:28 Speaker 02 All right. I promised talk of wackiness before we left about the idea that the Earth circled a central fire, capital C, capital F, like the big fire.
21:39 Josh Clark? Right.
21:40 Speaker 02 And this was a thing. Pythagoreans, which are the people, the group that followed in the footsteps of Pythagoras himself in the 6th century. They thought that the Earth circled a big central fire, and not only the Earth, but basically everything, all the planets, all the stars, the sun and the moon, everything circled around a central fire, and that there was also a counter-Earth, like another Earth. And I don't know how you pronounce that, Antichthon?
22:11 Josh Clark? I think it's Antikthon.
22:13 Speaker 02 Antikthon?
22:14 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's a really odd word.
22:16 Speaker 02 It is. It's not capitalized, which is, makes me feel weird.
22:20 Josh Clark? Yeah, it seems fishy, but that's the name of a counter-Earth that's either in the same orbit or in its own orbit, but always opposite the sun from Earth, right?
22:30 Speaker 02 Right.
22:31 Josh Clark? This wasn't something where they were pointing up and it was Mars, and that's what they called Mars. This is a hypothetical planet that they were saying was out there, we just can't see it. And then also with the central fire, they're not saying that was the sun. The sun had its own orbit around the central fire.
22:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:46 Josh Clark? And the central fire was unseen, because Greece always revolved in a way, or the Earth always revolved in a way, that Greece was opposite the central fire, so it could never see it.
22:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, so there was this guy, Philaeus, probably?
23:01 Josh Clark? I think that's exactly right.
23:02 Speaker 02 Of Croton, which sounds like a planet that would circle a fire.
23:08 Josh Clark? Take me to your leader. I am Croton.
23:11 Speaker 02 But Croton was actually in southern Italy, and he was a, another Greek philosopher scientist, there were a lot of those guys. And he was hanging around with Socrates, he was a pretty prominent Pythagorean.
23:24 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah.
23:25 Speaker 02 And he was one of these guys that put forth this, you know, this idea, even though like, they moved away from geocentrism, which is great, but instead of moving directly into heliocentrism, they moved to the central fire thing first.
23:40 Josh Clark? Central firecism.
23:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:43 Josh Clark? So, yeah, he, he basically said, there's a central fire. Everything orbits around the central fire. Um, and the, all of the orbits are circular. They love circular orbits. Um, and that the earth, the sun, the moon, and the five planets each had their own orbit. And there was that counter earth too, Bizarro Earth, Antikhon, um, that was opposite earth at all times. That, um, made 10, 10 orbits altogether. And there were a couple of reasons for that. One is that to the Pythagoreans, 10 was a perfect number. So of course there were 10 orbits. But also it explained, having that counter earth, that 10th orbit, explained lunar eclipses.
24:25 Josh Clark? Because then that meant that that was just Antikhon's shadow being cast on the moon.
24:30 Speaker 02 Yeah. Also to, uh, in defense of these sort of wild ideas, uh, they did have the idea that these orbits, um, they, they varied quite a bit in how long they took. Uh, the earths took 24 hours. The suns took a year, the moons took a month. And, you know, they were on a right track at that point as far as lunar orbits and earth's orbits and, and the sun and things like that. Cause they all do take different amounts of time. And they were, they were pretty on track with the earth taking 24 hours. Except they, the way they describe it was, uh, I think it was more that, uh, not the earth is spinning on its axis as it orbits the sun, but more like, uh, we're really circulating the central fire a lot faster than the sun.
25:15 Speaker 02 And we lap the sun every 24 hours. And that's how we have day and night.
25:19 Josh Clark? It's just so wrong, but you can understand it's so fascinating that they had that data. They had that information available and they just went the exact wrong direction with it.
25:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:30 Josh Clark? But again, this is just what, this is what they had available to them at the time. I find that fascinating that that's how they explained it. Um, it's pretty cool. So in this, um, IFL science article, um, I found, they basically said, it's actually possible hypothetically for a counter earth to exist.
25:48 Josh Clark? In the same orbit as Earth, but always opposite Earth, like traveling at the same rate. We've discovered extrasolar planets that have that same arrangement. So it's possible, but it's impossible that there actually is a counter Earth. Because we've run models on it, our astrophysicists have, I should say, you and I haven't. And it would affect other planets. Even just a small counter Earth would affect other planets' orbits very noticeably. Starting with Venus, and Venus' orbit is not being affected by any mysterious object. So there is no counter Earth, it turns out.
26:26 Speaker 02 That's right. I'm sure Jim Morrison was very disappointed to hear that the central fire went away. This all reminded me of like a Doors song.
26:34 Josh Clark? Central fire, yeah, for sure.
26:37 Speaker 02 You know, everything revolving around a central fire, a counter Earth.
26:39 Josh Clark? Yeah. Yeah, it does kind of seem Doors-ish. Also Pink Floyd-y.
26:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's true, because the Doors didn't get super spacey, as like literal space.
26:49 Josh Clark? No, but he, a central fire sounds Jim Morrison, a counter Earth sounds Pink Floyd-y.
26:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, you're right.
26:57 Josh Clark? Okay, I'm glad we've finally settled that.
27:01 Speaker 02 All right, what do we got next?
27:03 Josh Clark? So another one that I think a lot of people are familiar with is the four elements, like Earth, air, wind, fire, Earth, wind, fire, and air.
27:13 Speaker 02 Great band, okay.
27:14 Josh Clark? Exactly.
27:15 Speaker 02 Air screws it all up.
27:15 Josh Clark? Air featuring air.
27:17 Speaker 02 Another great band. Air should open for Earth, Wind & Fire.
27:19 Josh Clark? Exactly. And that whole idea, it dates back to like the humoral sense of medicine as well. This was something that was found in, I think, the 6th century BCE. And that Anaximenes, the guy who also said, "It's shells," also was like, "It's air."
27:40 Speaker 02 I love this guy.
27:40 Josh Clark? Yeah, he really was out there. But he, like, he lived in a van down by the river, but he was very well-regarded.
27:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, so, I mean, a lot of people were sort of thinking at the time that things were all made from a single thing. None, no one could get together and agree on what that single thing might be. But like you said, for Exa, what was it, an Exa Minis?
28:06 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think so.
28:08 Speaker 02 He was all about the air.
28:09 Josh Clark? Yeah.
28:09 Speaker 02 And Plato came along and then later said, actually, we've got earth, fire, water, and air. And Aristotle said, don't forget about the ether. And they're like, alright.
28:22 Josh Clark? Yeah.
28:22 Speaker 02 Fine.
28:23 Josh Clark? That's something that that comes up a lot when you start researching ancient knowledge. Aristotle, in particular, was the guy everyone looked at for a thumbs up or thumbs down on, and knowledge at the time. And just him giving a thumbs up would, would mean that people would keep doing it for 2,000 years until the scientific revolution. He was that well regarded in his time and following his time as well. So he, he definitely was like, yes, I'm totally down with the whole earth, air, fire, water, and ether idea, that everything is made of that. And that everything is touching everything else. So like the space between you and me filled with the air element. But not only that, it's
29:06 Josh Clark? not only like, if you look at the earth, that's obviously earth element, or if you look at fire, there's fire element. Everything is made up of a combination of some degree of each of these elements. And there's actually method to that madness, too. It wasn't just like, because we're, we know what water is, we know what air is, we know what fire is, and earth, that's what we're going to say everything's made up. They actually made observations that either led them to this, or that really supported their ideas in the first place.
29:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure.
29:35 Josh Clark? Like, for example, this How Stuff Works article gives a great example. Wood was solid, which means that it had earth in it. It floated, which means that it had an air element to it. And then it burned.
29:46 Speaker 02 It was a witch.
29:47 Josh Clark? Right? Then it burned.
29:48 Speaker 02 A witch, didn't, yeah.
29:49 Josh Clark? So, part fire, too. So you could see how these things kind of came together to form a log, or a stone, or a rabbit is another recurring theme.
29:59 Speaker 02 Yeah. All right. So that's where we are. Then this guy, Epidocles, comes along. He's from Sicily, 5th century BCE. And he was one of the first people to kind of put forth the theory that, you know, maybe things are built out of things that are so small that we can't see them.
30:19 Josh Clark? Right.
30:19 Speaker 02 That there are actual building blocks. We can't touch them. We can't see them or feel them. And if you look at a stone, like, look at that big rock over there. That's not, we call it rock, but it's not rock. It's made up of these small elements. And people went, "Elements?" And he said, "Yes, elements." And this was a pretty, like, far out, but on the right track way of thinking for 5th century BCE.
30:44 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think he was, Epidocles was the guy who came along and said, "No, that these things are all made up of different combinations and interactions of these four elements." And he also suggested that the transformations or the creations of these things took place through an attractive force known as love.
31:01 Speaker 02 Oh, man. I love that part.
31:03 Josh Clark? That that was the combiner, the creator force. So if you step back and think about Epidocles, he's just introduced the idea that there are elements. There are elements. It's just not earth, air, fire, wind, and water. And he also introduced the idea of attractive forces that bring elements together. And it's not love, maybe. It's more like electromagnetism or the nuclear force, something like that.
31:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. Boy, talk about Jim Morrison. He would have been all over this episode.
31:31 Josh Clark? Totally.
31:32 Speaker 02 I think he would have been a Big Stuff You Should Know fan.
31:35 Josh Clark? Do you think so? I could see him really just talking smack about us for no good reason on the internet.
31:40 Speaker 02 I mean, how old would he be today?
31:43 Josh Clark? Ooh.
31:43 Speaker 02 He died at, it's a 27 clubber, and he died in, what, the 70s? So,
31:49 Josh Clark? I would say probably 48. Let's say he was born in 1948. So 75. He'd be, that's perfect age to complain on the internet these days.
31:58 Speaker 02 I remember. I remember seeing a phony Gap ad. This is a long time ago, where they showed like an aged Jim Morrison in like Gap jeans or something.
32:10 Josh Clark? What?
32:10 Speaker 02 And they did a really good job with it, and it looked like, totally like what you could picture him looking like.
32:16 Josh Clark? Are you sure you didn't just dream that?
32:19 Speaker 02 I'm pretty sure. I also saw a thing recently where they use AI to create like what would they look like now kind of things. For a lot of people who died young and some of them were pretty good and some of them like Elvis's was just like you just basically gussied up Vernon Presley, his dad.
32:34 Josh Clark? Oh, really?
32:35 Speaker 02 It was like, obviously his dad.
32:36 Josh Clark? Lazy AI?
32:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, some of them were okay. Some of them were pretty dumb.
32:40 Josh Clark? Well, like who, who was one that was okay that you saw?
32:42 Speaker 02 Uh, oh, boy. I'm trying to remember. Um, I don't know.
32:48 Josh Clark? I'll have to go look that up. I always forget to look up the stuff you talk about on the episodes because the moment we're done, all of it just vanishes. You stop existing.
32:59 Speaker 02 That's great. That's the secret to our longevity.
33:02 Josh Clark? That's right. We just both stop existing in the other's minds until the next time.
33:07 Speaker 02 Uh, all right. So where are we? We are.
33:11 Josh Clark? I think we're at Democritus.
33:12 Speaker 02 Okay, yeah, yeah. Democritus then comes along.
33:15 Josh Clark? Yeah.
33:15 Speaker 02 And he's like, all right, I got this new theory because there were some problems with what Empedocles was talking about. First of all, he has offered no evidence. I don't know if anyone noticed that at all. And second of all, you take that rock over there and he said it's made up, you know, if you, if you break it up, it's made up of smaller things. But if you keep breaking that thing up, you're never going to get down to fire, no matter how small you break that thing up.
33:42 Josh Clark? Right. So he came up with this idea that you could break something down to finally its most basic unit, an indivisible unit that he called atomos, which is Latin or Greek for atoms.
33:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:59 Josh Clark? This guy came up with the idea of atoms, which he not only said were the indivisible base units of everything, everything. He also said that they were indestructible and eternal. And then he also said that they exist in free space around us, what you would call today a vacuum. So this guy basically predicted atomic theory a couple thousand years ago, right?
34:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:25 Josh Clark? And it's known as the best guess in antiquity. He got it so close. Where he went astray is that he said that when you broke down a rock. You would get to the rock atom and that was it. Like what you saw, a rock, a rabbit, something like that. You, you would, um, if you broke it down to its constituent part, like its base atom, it was a, a rabbit atom or a rock atom or a log atom or a chuck atom. The things, the, the thing it was, it was like that specific kind of atom rather than a combination of just a few types of atoms that can make anything.
35:04 Speaker 02 Yeah. Which, you know, you did pretty good up into that point.
35:07 Josh Clark? For sure.
35:08 Speaker 02 You did very good. I would dare say excellent up into that point.
35:11 Josh Clark? Would you take your toga off for him?
35:13 Speaker 02 I'd flash it.
35:14 Josh Clark? Okay.
35:16 Speaker 02 But, you know, with permission, of course.
35:18 Josh Clark? Sure. Yeah, I would hope so.
35:20 Speaker 02 You know, it's like, do you mind if I lift my toga?
35:22 Josh Clark? I'm good. I'm glad you added that, Joe.
35:25 Speaker 02 Uh, so, you know, everyone of course wanted to know what Aristotle and Plato thought, even, uh, you know, at the time, or especially at the time. And they both basically rejected, uh, these ideas. Aristotle sort of accepted it, but he said, well, also, uh, there are those four core elements, but they can be transformed into one another. And everyone was like, oh God, here he goes again. Like now we have to start thinking that because Aristotle said it.
35:53 Josh Clark? Exactly. He was, he's, he threw his lot in with the four elements in part because he totally rejected Democritus's assertion that there was such a thing as atoms moving in a void in free space. He said, there's no such thing as a void. Everything around us is connected, like the stuff that just looks like space between you and me, that's the air element filling that up. Like there's nothing that's not connected. And because he just would not accept the idea of a vacuum, um, he gave the thumbs up to, um, Empedocles idea with the elements, thumbs down to Democritus. So Democritus's incredibly accurate prediction would have to wait about 2,000 years before people finally came around and were like, oh, Democritus was super right.
36:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. And that's in 1643. Evangelista Torricelli came along.
36:43 Josh Clark? Linda Evangelista Torricelli.
36:45 Speaker 02 That's right. Uh, uh, an Italian mathematician this time, uh, studying under Galileo, uh, came along and showed that air, and I believe he, was he the first person to create a vacuum in an experiment like this?
36:59 Josh Clark? Yeah.
37:00 Speaker 02 So that's a pretty key part here. But in a vacuum showed that air had weight, like this thing that we can't see or, or well, sometimes you can smell it, I guess. But you can't see it or, or feel it or anything like that. And it, but it was still capable about of pushing down liquid mercury, which is also how we got the barometer, by the way.
37:21 Josh Clark? Right.
37:22 Speaker 02 And everyone was like, it rocked everyone's world, basically. Like, we can't feel it, we can't see it, but it has weight, so it's gotta be made of something. And so what's it made of?
37:32 Josh Clark? Right. So how can an element be made of something else? I guess is the, the point of that. And then even more to the point, Torricelli, by creating the first experimental vacuum, proved that Democritus's assertion that there is a vacuum as predictions, part of his atomic theory, was right. So that was what really led to the investigation into atomic theory, which was finally, I think, put forth in, I think, 1803, maybe, by John Dalton.
38:02 Speaker 02 Amazing.
38:03 Josh Clark? It really is amazing that he got that close. Like, imagine just, and again, he's guessing. He had no way of testing any of this, but it was a really good guess.
38:14 Speaker 02 Yeah. Very, very smart, forward-thinking guy.
38:17 Josh Clark? Yeah. I'll bet he was a heck of a discus thrower, too.
38:22 Speaker 02 All right. Well, we're gonna take our final break and we're gonna come back and talk about our final topic. Number one, spontaneous generation.
38:46 Josh Clark? In Orlando, meetings reach another level, thanks to a growing list of award-winning restaurants, a world-class convention center, a great hotel community, easy access through the airport, and of course, the weather. Andrew Moyes, VP of Fan Expo HQ, had this to say about Orlando. Luxury hotels, Michelin restaurants, easy access through the airport, all of those key things feed into the proper executive experience. And while you may know Orlando for its attractions, industries like healthcare, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing make it a hub for cutting-edge businesses. And that's what makes Orlando unbelievably real. Learn more at orlandoforbusiness.com.
39:25 Speaker 02 So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home.
39:38 Josh Clark? Yeah, say you're worried about package theft. Well, the ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app.
39:51 Speaker 02 And here's the best thing, there are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there either. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors.
40:02 Josh Clark? Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
40:29 Speaker 02 Hey, everybody. Cozy season is upon us. And that means crisp mornings, that means soft layers, and that means Bombas.
40:36 Josh Clark? Yeah, Bombas makes your comfiest fall staples, so you can make the most out of one of the best seasons of the year. Bombas has new suede moccasins that are perfect for fall, because they have cushy soles, a sheerling lining, and they're made of water-resistant suede.
40:50 Speaker 02 That's right, and their slippers are everything you'd want for a cozy night in, made with the softest, squishiest materials.
40:55 Josh Clark? And of course, Bombas has socks. Not just any socks, socks for every type of weather, every type of occasion, because fall can be fickle, and Bombas makes socks that can handle it all. And the best part about Bombas, for every item you purchase, they donate an essential clothing item to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased equals one donated, with over 200 million donations and counting.
41:17 Speaker 02 So head on over to Bombas.com/SYSK and use code SYSK at checkout for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash SYSK, using code SYSK at checkout.
41:46 Josh Clark? All right Chuck, so there's a well-worn trope that if you throw some grain in like a cellar and leave it alone for a little while, it'll spontaneously generate mice. Right? Have you, you've heard that before, haven't you?
42:01 Speaker 02 Sure, that, that old bumper sticker.
42:03 Josh Clark? Apparently, there's an element that I'd never heard of before. You have to put the grains of wheat on a soiled shirt and then it'll generate mice after a given amount of time. And that came from the mind of a guy named Antoine van Levenhooch.
42:21 Speaker 02 Whoa.
42:23 Josh Clark? Van Levenhooch. Yeah. Who in the 1670s basically pointed to a bunch of stuff and said spontaneous generation, spontaneous generation, spontaneous generation. And again, he, he was, so he wasn't actually coming up with this idea of spontaneous generation. He was giving it a boost in the 17th century. It was actually a really ancient way of explaining where life came from. And at the time of, again Aristotle, there were three competing theories, right? There was spontaneous generation, there was pre-formationism, and then there was epigenesis. And depending on what you thought about what, you subscribe to at least one, if not two of those at the same time.
43:07 Speaker 02 Can I name my favorite spontaneous generation from Jean Baptiste van Helmont?
43:13 Josh Clark? Yes.
43:14 Speaker 02 That if you took a brick mold and lined it with basil, you would spawn scorpions.
43:21 Josh Clark? Yeah. Isn't that weird?
43:22 Speaker 02 It's pretty good.
43:23 Josh Clark? He also said, and I think I said it was Antoine van Levenhooch who said that. No, I'm sorry. That was the guy who, who started to perfect the microscope. He comes in later on. I was wrong. But Van Helmont, Van Helmont. He was the one that came up with a whole bunch of different ones, like mice from grains, scorpions from brick molds. I think insects was a huge one, that if you laid out rotting meat.
43:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is a big one.
43:50 Josh Clark? Maggots would spontaneously generate. And again, it's, it, you, it sounds mad. It sounds ridiculous and preposterous to us today. But that was before Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch scientist, introduced or popularized the microscope and could show with his, his much more improved version of the microscope, that there was a whole other world out there that's invisible to the naked eye. Prior to that, they, they had no idea. And if they did it, they were just guessing. And so it would make sense that you're like, okay, if you leave some rotting meat out, these
44:24 Speaker 02 Totally.
44:24 Josh Clark? These things just come out of nowhere. The maggots generate from, spontaneously from rotting meat.
44:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, but you know, that was disproved before the microscope, the maggots at least,
44:35 Josh Clark? Yeah.
44:35 Speaker 02 by Francesco Redi, was a Tuscan physician and said, uh, you know, all you gotta do is keep the flies off of it. You're not gonna get maggots. So let's just cover it with some muslin and voila, no maggots. So everyone was a little disappointed, I think. The microscope comes along.
44:54 Josh Clark? Right.
44:55 Speaker 02 And it, it, it didn't like blow up everything automatically as far as these theories go. It did not settle anything out of the gate. Because what basically they were saying was, you know, there are things that are so tiny, we can't see them with our naked eye, but now we can see them with this microscope. But then all of a sudden, people started saying, oh, well, those tiny things are what's causing the spontaneous generation then. We just couldn't see them before.
45:22 Josh Clark? Right. But then the microscope also said, the people who were in favor of spontaneous generation said, great. Those are the things that are spontaneously generating then. We just don't see them until they become maggots. And so they performed experiments where they would seal a flask of water, boil it to sterilize it, and then wait a few days and go back and look. And there would be microbes again where there hadn't been before. And they're like, see spontaneous generation. And then some of the critics of those experiments said, you guys just aren't boiling it long enough. It's not actually sterile.
45:58 Speaker 02 Right.
45:58 Josh Clark? And it wasn't until, I think, 1860, when Louis Pasteur came along and said, this is how you precisely sterilize things and showed the world how to do it, that he really was, he managed to really kind of put the final nail in the coffin for spontaneous generation.
46:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that was kind of it. From that moment, we knew, or you know, we started to build on the idea that life arises from life. That's the only way things do not spontaneously generate. As fun of an idea as that is, life comes from life and that's the only place it comes from.
46:32 Josh Clark? Yes, so I said that in the ancient world, you may have subscribed to two of those. And the reason why is because one of them, epigenesis, an Aristotle product, Aristotle brand, was pretty accurate. It was Aristotle explaining that the fluids from the mother and the fluids from the father exchanged during sexual reproduction are what give rise to biology, what gives rise to life. And after that, it just becomes an embryo and starts growing. And the main rival, the epigenesis, was pre-formationism, which said that if you could get a sample of your dad's sperm and could zoom in on an individual sperm cell,
47:15 Josh Clark? you would see a mini version of yourself. And that that you, that was just, that was deposited in your mom, where you started to grow, you came out of your mom, you kept growing until you finally reached your adult size, but you were preformed even before you were conceived. And those were the two rivals. But the cool thing about epigenesis is that you could say epigenesis and spontaneous generation can coexist because some things spontaneously generate, like say crocodiles out of an exposed riverbank. Once they, once they spontaneously generate, then they'll just start reproducing biologically through epigenesis.
47:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:55 Josh Clark? Pretty interesting that Aristotle finally got one right.
47:59 Speaker 02 That guy.
48:00 Josh Clark? Yeah, that guy.
48:01 Speaker 02 I like the Aristotle brand.
48:03 Josh Clark? I had a really great time, and I know you did. So I say we do a part two of this someday.
48:08 Speaker 02 All right, we'll see.
48:09 Josh Clark? Okay. Well, as everyone's waiting for that, you can go check out this House of Works article about things we believed before the scientific method. And I think since I said that, it's time for listener mail.
48:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, I dug this one out. Jeez, this one's been out there for a long time. So I'm just gonna say, long time coming.
48:30 Josh Clark? Okay.
48:31 Speaker 02 Hey, guys, just listened to how conversion therapy doesn't work.
48:34 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah.
48:36 Speaker 02 Joe, the listener, got on to you, I guess this was another listener mail, got on to you about saying "an historic," and then you started to doubt every H-word. But the rule is super simple, guys. As long as you know how things sound, does the word start with a vowel sound? If the answer is yes, then "an" is correct. It starts with a consonant, use "a." So here's some examples. "The Undertaker tapped people out with a Hell's Gate." I guess that's a wrestling thing.
49:07 Josh Clark? Okay.
49:08 Speaker 02 "The Atomic Leg Drop is a Hulk Hogan move." I like this guy.
49:16 Speaker 02 "It was an honor to have seen Bray Wyatt's creativity on screen," and "honor." "The pre-show for this pay-per-view lasted an hour."
49:30 Speaker 02 So "an historic," it sounds snooty almost to say "an historic," but it's true because you say it takes about an hour, and that doesn't sound snooty.
49:39 Josh Clark? No, but it depends on how much you emphasize the H in "historic," because most people don't say "historic," it's "historic."
49:46 Speaker 02 Right.
49:47 Josh Clark? Whereas "honor," it's like, it starts with an "O," like the H is silent almost.
49:52 Speaker 02 Right, like if England and Henry Higgins is speaking to you.
49:56 Josh Clark? Exactly.
49:59 Speaker 02 These examples, guys, brings me to the request from my email. Could you do a show in pro wrestling?
50:04 Josh Clark? Nice.
50:05 Speaker 02 And that is from Aviva.
50:07 Josh Clark? Thanks, Aviva. That was a great email, one of the all-time greats.
50:11 Speaker 02 Agreed.
50:12 Josh Clark? And yes, we'll do one on pro wrestling someday. We've done, we've nibbled around the edges, but we'll finally do one on just pro wrestling.
50:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, we did Mexican wrestling, right? Lucha Libre?
50:20 Josh Clark? Yeah, we also did a live one on Andre the Giant.
50:24 Speaker 02 So maybe not on pro wrestling, then.
50:27 Josh Clark? Well, if you want to be like Aviva and take your shot at requesting an episode, you can do that by sending us an email to [email protected] .
50:38 Speaker 03 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
50:53 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.
51:26 Josh Clark? Chevy has called the heartbeat of America for a reason, and Silverado keeps its rhythm. You feel it in the Turbo Max engine with best-in-class standard torque, and available Z71 off-road package that keeps you rolling when the road turns rough, and the most functional truck bed with best-in-class cargo space. They're trucks that work as hard as you do, so you can do more of what you love without missing a beat. Chevrolet, together let's drive. Based on latest competitive information, excludes other GM vehicles.
51:54 Speaker 00 If you're a fight fan and you haven't seen the BKFC app yet, you're missing the world's most exciting combat sport. Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship has changed the game. No gloves, no stalling, no boring rolling around on the ground. Just pure violence and pure entertainment. The BKFC app includes live events, past fights, original series, behind the scenes access, merch discounts and more. Only $7.99 a month or $49.99 a year. Get the BKFC app at BKFC.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Previous The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: Legs! Legs! Legs! (The Periodic Table) Next The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: How Global Warming Works Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated