Aristotle: history's most prolific prankster?

I have a friend who many ancient Greeks would have believed to be immortal, purely because he can achieve the "impossible" task of licking his own elbow. I've never been someone who trusts such ideas as this. It's always seemed to me that, if there are people who make their living as contortionists bending into the oddest shapes, then there must be people who can lick their own elbow. Long tongues and short arms must be paired together in a few people's DNA, even if it is unusual.

Whenever I hear a saying or a metaphor or a "fact" that everybody knows, I question it. There's no such thing as the sound of one hand clapping because clapping is, by definition, two hands clapping together. It doesn't sound like anything because it doesn't exist.

When trees fall in the forest, they make a big, loud sound (unless it's a very small tree). Whether or not any ears or ear like structures pick it up, those sound waves are still going to hurtle through the air, vibrating molecule after vibrating molecule.

Even moving away from philosophical questions and setting my realist agenda aside, the kind of facts that people believe and have believed since the dawn of time boggle the mind. Nothing huge or grand, I wouldn't expect an ancient Greek to know about the molecular composition of a star or even what a molecule is. They could have had apparently good evidence that for all kinds of makeshift cures and superstitions. But sometimes the depths of stupidity that even the wisest men of an era can stoop to is startling.

Aristotle, a famed Greek philosopher whose works were held in high regard and were considered unquestionable for centuries after his death, made some very silly mistakes. Maybe he could be forgiven for not accepting the idea that stars were like our sun, just unimaginably further away. His assertion that objects of different mass fall at different speed is somewhat understandable, unless you consider that he may well have been the one who originated this ridiculous myth that went unchallenged for centuries and still lingers on today, confusing large numbers of first year Physics students.

Now for the truly bizarre. He held that flies had only 4 legs and that women had fewer teeth than men. It apparently never occurred to him to try catching a fly and taking a moment to count. Catching a buzzard would be far more difficult but that simply makes me wonder where he got the idea that they had three testicles. He was married twice and, when formulating his theories on dental numerology, apparently never thought to simply look inside a woman's mouth, preferring to make faulty assumptions.

He was a genius in a many other respects but common sense seems not to have been among his repertoire of talents. Unless, of course, it was all a cunning practical joke that got a little out of hand.

People today will laugh and scoff at the lack of simple knowledge that all those ancient barbarians held. But people today are just as silly. There are people who believe that eggs will only balance on their ends during the Spring equinox. Their basis for this? They've seen it done, they've tried it themselves and it works! Eggs balance during the equinox! The fact that they've never even tried it on any other day of the year doesn't cross their minds.

It is well known that the Sun is up during the day and that it becomes night when it goes down. That's fair enough. Then it's also well known that this is when the moon comes up, going down before morning. Simply looking up every once in a while during the early evening or even the late morning will disprove this little nugget of misinformation.

Maybe disease and dietary deficiencies could have explained Aristotle's thought's on female dentistry, as woman in his time may have eaten differently and he may have actually consistently seen fewer teeth in their mouthes. But that won't excuse all the generations who came after him who didn't bother to check his work. Nothing excuses the flies feet and the buzzard's testicles, either for Aristotle or his successors. Modern people are no better, with their inability to look upwards and stop taking their facts from children's books.

Just think for a second about how much of what you "know" could be wrong. This is why you should always question any facts that come your way. I never trust that anything is completely impossible unless, like the Theory of Relativity's proof that you can't go faster than light, there's a heck of a lot of complicated maths to back it up. If someone says to you some fascinating yet simple fact, question it. Question them. Question their sources and if something doesn't add up, chances are that the "fact" isn't all that factual.

Knowledge is a wonderful thing, so long as you know what you're talking about.