The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: How the Scientific Method Works

12:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I think Eudoxus. All right.

12:07Josh Clark:Eudoxus 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. Check. 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. Roger. 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.

12:45Chuck Bryant:All right.

12:46Josh Clark: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.

13:11Chuck Bryant: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.

13:42Josh Clark: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.

13:48Chuck Bryant:But he was the first person to give us a model 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.

14:19Yeah, 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

14:35Josh Clark:in a shell.

14:36Chuck Bryant:Yes, but all of these shells are rotating in different orbits around Earth.

14:42Josh Clark:Right, but they can affect one another, right? Or did that come along later?

14:46Chuck Bryant:That came along with Eudoxys. So Anaximenes basically said it's shells. And then Eudoxys was the first one to really lay out an explanation of 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.

15:18Josh Clark: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.

15:29Chuck Bryant: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.

15:41Josh Clark:He's wrong on everything.

15:43Chuck Bryant:He was basically wrong, yeah, on all five of those points. But 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 gods. 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. 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, he had to be circular. So just by what he had available at the time, that's why this motion was supposedly circular.

16:24Chuck Bryant:But that was a huge boondoggle because it's not circular, as we found out finally from Kepler, who came along in, 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. It's just -

16:53Josh Clark:Everyone was like, that makes a lot more sense. And then he brings up the shells.

16:57Chuck Bryant: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.

17:08Josh Clark: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.

17:26Chuck Bryant: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.

17:48Josh Clark:That's a good teaser.

17:49Chuck Bryant:You know? Yeah.

17:51Josh Clark: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. You took your toga off? Oh, wait a minute. My grapevine atop my head is off. There you go. All right. My toga's back on.

18:21Chuck Bryant:Okay, good. Because I was going to say they're like, a helicopter won't be invented for a thousand plus years. All right.

18:28Josh Clark: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.

18:55Josh Clark:Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you are drowning in software instead of growing your business.

19:07Chuck Bryant:And this is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

19:26Josh Clark:And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. So you can focus on what really matters, which is running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you?

19:45Chuck Bryant:Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

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20:27Chuck Bryant:In business, there's no room for guesswork. Every shipment matters. Every deadline counts. When you're trying to keep operations running smoothly, the last thing you need is uncertainty.

20:38Josh Clark:That's right. That's why reliability is at the core of USPS Ground Advantage. From the moment your package is first scanned in, it moves through a secure nationwide network, aiding in a timely and accurate delivery.

20:49Chuck Bryant:You get near real-time tracking so you can keep up with your shipments. And with affordable upfront pricing, there are no hidden fees or surprise surcharges to throw off your cost sheets.

20:59Josh Clark:That's right. And that all adds up to predictable deliveries that you can depend on. Because knowing your logistics are handled lets you focus on everything else, your customers, your team, and the future that you're building. Just visit usps.com slash ground advantage to start shipping with confidence. USPS Ground Advantage.

21:32All right.

21:33Josh Clark: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. Right. 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. Antich-thon?

22:16Josh Clark:I think it's Antich-thon. Antich-thon?

22:19Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's a really odd word.

22:21Josh Clark:It is. It's not capitalized, which makes me feel weird.

22:25Chuck Bryant: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? Right. 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. Yeah. 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.

23:02Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah, so there was this guy, Philolaus, probably. I think that's exactly right. Of Croton, which sounds like a planet that would circle a fire. Take me to your leader.

23:14Chuck Bryant:I am Croton.

23:15Josh Clark:But Croton was actually in southern Italy, and he was another Greek philosopher scientist. There were a lot of those guys. And he was hanging around with Socrates. He was a pretty prominent Pythagorean.

23:29Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah.

23:30Josh Clark: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.

23:45Chuck Bryant:Central fire-cism. Yeah. So, yeah, he basically said there's a central fire. Everything orbits around the central fire. And all of the orbits are circular. They love circular orbits. 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, Antichrist, that was opposite Earth at all times that made 10, 10 orbits altogether. And there are 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, because then that meant that that was just Antikton's shadow being cast on the moon.

24:34Yeah.

24:35Josh Clark:Also, in defense of these sort of wild ideas, they did have the idea that these orbits, they varied quite a bit in how long they took. The Earth's 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. in the sun and things like that, because they all do take different amounts of time. And they were pretty on track with the Earth taking 24 hours, except the way they describe it was, I think it was more that not the Earth is spinning on its axis as it orbits the sun, but more like, we're really circulating the central fire a lot faster than the sun, and we lap the sun every 24 hours.

25:22Josh Clark:And that's how we have day and night.

25:23Chuck Bryant: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. Yeah. But, again, this is just what they had available to them at the time. I find that fascinating that that's how they explained it. It's pretty cool. So in this IFL Science article I found, they basically said it's actually possible, hypothetically, for a counter-Earth to exist 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.

26:02Chuck Bryant: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's orbit is not being affected by any mysterious object. So there is no counter-Earth, it turns out.

26:30Josh Clark: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 Doris song.

26:39Chuck Bryant:Central Fire, yeah, for sure.

26:41Josh Clark:You know, everything revolving around a central fire, a counter-Earth.

26:44Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Yeah. It does kind of seem doors-ish. Also, Pink Floyd-y.

26:50Josh Clark:Yeah, that's true, because the doors didn't get super spacey as, like, literal space.

26:54Chuck Bryant:No, but a central fire sounds Jim Morrison-y. A counter-Earth sounds Pink Floyd-y.

27:01Josh Clark:Yeah, you're right.

27:02Chuck Bryant:Okay. I'm glad we finally settled it.

27:06Josh Clark:All right, what do we got next?

27:08Chuck Bryant: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.

27:18Josh Clark:Great band. Okay. Exactly. Air screws it all up. Air featuring air. Another great band. Air should open for earth, wind, and fire. Exactly.

27:25Chuck Bryant:And those, 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.

27:44Josh Clark:I love this guy. Yeah, he really was out there.

27:48Chuck Bryant:But he lived in a van down by the river, but he was very well regarded.

27:53Josh Clark:Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of people were sort of thinking at the time that things were all made from a single thing. No one could get together and agree on what that single thing might be. But like you said, for Exa, what was it? An Examenes? Yeah, I think so. He was all about the air. Yeah. 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, all right. Yeah. Fine.

28:28Chuck Bryant:That's something 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 knowledge at the time. And just him giving a thumbs up 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 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.

29:09Chuck Bryant:But not only that, it's 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 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.

29:39Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure.

29:40Chuck Bryant: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. It was a witch. Right? Then it burned. A witch didn't, yeah. So part fire, too. So you can see how these things kind of came together to form a log or a stone or a rabbit is another recurring theme.

30:04Josh Clark:Yeah. All right. So that's where we are. Then this guy Empedocles 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. Right. 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.

30:49Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I think he was, and Pedocles was the guy who came along and said, no, 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.

31:06Josh Clark:Oh, man, I love that part.

31:08Chuck Bryant: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.

31:33Josh Clark:Yeah, exactly. Boy, talk about Jim Morrison. He would have been all over this episode.

31:36Chuck Bryant:Totally. I think it would have been a big Stuff You Should Know fan. Do you think so? I could see him really just talking smack about us for no good reason on the Internet.

31:45Josh Clark:I mean, how old would he be today?

31:48Chuck Bryant:Ooh.

31:48Josh Clark:He died at, it's a 27 clubber, and he died in, what, the 70s, so.

31:52Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm. I would say probably 48. Let's say he was born in 1948. So 75. That's perfect age to complain on the Internet these days.

32:02Josh Clark: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 and they did a really good job with it and it looked like totally like what you could picture him looking like are you sure you didn't just dream that I'm pretty sure I also saw a thing recently where they use AI to create like what would they look like now

32:28Chuck Bryant:kind of things for a lot

32:30Josh Clark: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.

32:39Chuck Bryant:Oh, really?

32:39Josh Clark:It was like obviously his dad. You lazy AI? Yeah, some of them were okay. Some of them were pretty dumb.

32:45Chuck Bryant:Well, like who was one that was okay that you saw?

32:48Josh Clark:Oh, boy. I'm trying to remember. I don't know. I'll have to go look that up.

32:55Chuck Bryant: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. Yeah. You stop existing.

33:04Josh Clark:That's great. That's the secret to our longevity, I think.

33:07Chuck Bryant:That's right. We just both stop existing in the other's minds until the next time.

33:12Josh Clark:All right. So where are we? We are with—

33:15Chuck Bryant:I think we're at Democritus.

33:17Josh Clark:Okay. Yeah. Democritus then comes along.

33:19Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

33:20Josh Clark: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 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.

33:46Chuck Bryant: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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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.

34:42Chuck Bryant:And that was it. Like what you saw, a rock, a rabbit, something like that. You you would if you broke it down to its constituent part, like its base atom, it was a rabbit atom or a rock atom or a log atom or a chuck atom. Right, right, right. 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.

35:08Josh Clark:Yeah, which, you know, you did pretty good up until that point. For sure. You did very good. I would dare say excellent up until that point.

35:16Chuck Bryant:Would you take your toga off for him?

35:18Josh Clark:I'd flash it.

35:19Chuck Bryant:Okay.

35:21Josh Clark:But, you know, with permission, of course.

35:23Chuck Bryant:Sure. Yeah, I would hope so.

35:25Josh Clark:You know, it's like, do you mind if I lift my toga? I'm good. I'm glad you added that. So, you know, everyone, of course, wanted to know what Aristotle and Plato thought, even, you know, at the time or especially at the time. And they both basically rejected these ideas. Aristotle sort of accepted it, but he said, well, also, 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.

35:59Chuck Bryant:He threw his lot in with the four elements in part because he totally rejected Democritus' 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, he gave the thumbs up to Empedocles' idea with the elements, thumbs down to Democritus. So Democritus' incredibly accurate prediction would have to wait about 2 ,000 years before people finally came around and were like, oh, Democritus was super right.

36:41Josh Clark:Yeah, exactly. And that's in 1643, Evangelista Torricelli came along.

36:48Chuck Bryant:Linda Evangelista Torricelli.

36:49Josh Clark:That's right. An Italian mathematician this time, studied under Galileo, came along and showed that air, and I believe he, was he the first person to create a vacuum in an experiment like this? Yeah. 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, well, sometimes you can smell it, I guess. But you can't see it or feel it or anything like that. But it was still capable of pushing down liquid mercury, which is also how we got the barometer, by the way.

37:26Chuck Bryant:Right.

37:26Josh Clark: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 got to be made of something. And so what's it made of?

37:37Chuck Bryant:Right. So how can an element be made of something else, I guess, is the point of that. And then even more to the point, Torricelli, by creating the first experimental vacuum, proved that Democritus' assertion that there is a vacuum, his predictions, part of his atomic theory, was right. So that was what really led to the investigation into atomic theory, which is finally, I think, put forth in, I think, 1803 maybe by John Dalton.

38:08Josh Clark:Amazing.

38:08Chuck Bryant: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.

38:19Josh Clark:Yeah, very smart, forward-thinking guy.

38:22Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I'll bet he was a heck of a discus thrower too.

38:27Josh Clark:All right, well, we're going to take our final break. And we're going to come back and talk about our final topic. Number one, spontaneous generation.

38:53Josh Clark:Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you are drowning in software instead of growing your business.

39:05Chuck Bryant:And this is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload. No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier.

39:24Josh Clark:And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. So you can focus on what really matters, which is running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you?

39:44Chuck Bryant:Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

39:49Josh Clark:Thank you. Google is a trademark of Google LLC.

40:21Chuck Bryant:Sequences shortened and simulated. In business, there's no room for guesswork. Every shipment matters. Every deadline counts. When you're trying to keep operations running smoothly, the last thing you need is uncertainty.

40:36Josh Clark:That's right. That's why reliability is the core of USPS Ground Advantage. From the moment your package is first scanned in, it moves through a secure, nationwide network, aiding in a timely and accurate delivery.

40:47Chuck Bryant:You get near real-time tracking so you can keep up with your shipments. And with affordable upfront pricing, there are no hidden fees or surprise surcharges to throw off your cost sheets.

40:57Josh Clark:That's right. And that all adds up to predictable deliveries that you can depend on. Because knowing your logistics are handled lets you focus on everything else. Your customers, your team, and the future that you're building. Just visit usps.com slash ground advantage to start shipping with confidence. USPS Ground Advantage.

41:30Chuck Bryant: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? You've heard that before, haven't you?

41:45Josh Clark:Sure. That old bumper sticker?

41:49Chuck Bryant: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. Gross. And that came from the mind of a guy named Antoine von Lievenhoek. Lievenhoek. Whoa. Von Lievenhoek. Yeah. Who in the 1670s basically pointed to a bunch of stuff and said, spontaneous generation. spontaneous generation, spontaneous generation. And again, 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.

42:32Chuck Bryant: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.

42:51Josh Clark:Can I name my favorite spontaneous generation from Jean-Baptiste von Helmont?

42:58Chuck Bryant:Yes.

42:59Josh Clark:That if you took a brick mold and lined it with basil, you would spawn scorpions. Yeah.

43:06Chuck Bryant:Isn't that weird? It's pretty good. He also said, and I think I said it was Antoine von Lievenhoek who said that. No, I'm sorry. That was the guy who started to perfect the microscope. He comes in later on. I was wrong. But von Helmont, he was the one that came up with a whole bunch of different ones, like mice from grain, scorpions from brick molds. I think insects was a huge one that if you laid out rotting meat. Yeah, this is a big one. Maggots would spontaneously generate. And again, 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 much more improved version of the microscope that there was a whole other world out there that's invisible to the naked eye.

44:00Chuck Bryant:Prior to that, 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 things just come out of nowhere. The maggots generate spontaneously from rotting meat.

44:15Josh Clark:Yeah, but, you know, that was disproved before the microscope, the maggots at least, by Francesco Redi, was a Tuscan physician and said, you know, all you got to do is keep the flies off of it. You're not going to 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.

44:39Chuck Bryant:Right.

44:40Josh Clark:And 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 him 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.

45:07Chuck Bryant: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.

45:42Chuck Bryant: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 He managed to really kind of put the final nail in the coffin for spontaneous generation.

45:59Josh Clark: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.

46:16Chuck Bryant: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 of the epigenesis was preformationism, which said that if you could get a sample of your dad's sperm and could zoom in on an individual sperm cell, you would see a mini version of yourself and that was deposited in your mom where you started to grow.

47:09Chuck Bryant: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 spontaneously generate, then they'll just start reproducing biologically through epigenesis.

47:38Josh Clark:Yeah.

47:39Chuck Bryant:Pretty interesting that Aristotle finally got one right. That guy. Yeah, that guy.

47:45Josh Clark:I like the Aristotle brand.

47:47Chuck Bryant:I had a really great time, and I know you did. So I say we do a part two of this someday. All right, we'll see. Okay. Well, as everyone's waiting for that, you can go check out this HowStuffWorks article about things we believed before the scientific method. And I think since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

48:09Josh Clark:Yeah, I dug this one out. Jeez, this one's been out there for a long time. So I'm just going to say long time coming.

48:15Chuck Bryant:Okay.

48:15Josh Clark:Hey, guys, just listen to how conversion therapy doesn't work.

48:19Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah.

48:20Josh Clark:Joe, the listener, got on to you. I guess this was another listener mail. Got on to you about saying, and 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 and 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.

48:51Chuck Bryant:Okay.

48:53Josh Clark:The Atomic Leg Drop is a Hulk Hogan move. I like this guy. It was an honor to have seen Bray Wyatt's creativity on screen. An honor. The pre-show for this pay-per-view lasted an hour. So, and historic, it sounds snooty almost to say and historic, but it's true because you say it takes about an hour, and that doesn't sound snooty.

49:23Chuck Bryant:No, but it depends on how much you emphasize the H in historic, because most people don't say historic. It's historic.

49:31Josh Clark:Right.

49:32Chuck Bryant:Whereas honor, it starts with an O, like the H is silent almost.

49:36Josh Clark:Right, like you're from England and Henry Iggins is speaking to you.

49:40Chuck Bryant:Exactly.

49:43Josh Clark:these examples guys brings me to the request from my email could you do a show in pro wrestling nice and that is from Aviva

49:52Chuck Bryant:thanks Aviva that was a great email one of the all time greats 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

50:02Josh Clark:yeah we did Mexican wrestling right Lucha Libre

50:05Chuck Bryant:yeah we also did a live one on Andre the Giant

50:08Josh Clark:so maybe not on pro wrestling then

50:11Chuck Bryant: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 stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

50:22Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. www.amu .apus.edu Open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University.

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52:35Josh Clark:at orlandoforbusiness.com this is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human