GuyOnInternet
Active Member
- Mar 4, 2022
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To philosophers "studying" the natural world, the answer was NEVER I don't know so let's do some experiments and find out. They "logically deduced" complete nonsense and were spectacularly wrong about almost everything.
Let's start with the man who was considered the greatest logician ever, Aristotle.
The "Logic" of the Heavy: A 2,000-Year Comedy
Why Aristotleās Physics Was Historically Hallucinogenic with or without air resistance.
The air resistance myth. The "74-Day" Feather
Aristotleās "logic" for gravity was a simple, linear proportion: Double the weight, double the speed. This sounds "logical" until you apply the Sensory Data of a 20 lb stone and a 1 lb stone.The favorite defense of Aristotle's Theory of Gravity is the "Feather vs. Stone" excuse. People say, "He was right about air resistance!" That is pure bullshit. His math fails spectacularly even in the airiest of rooms.
- The Stats: A 20 lb stone is roughly 10 million times heavier than a down feather.
- The Aristotle Prediction: If the stone takes 0.6 seconds to hit the floor from a height of 6 feet, the feather must take 10 million times longer.
- The Hilarious Result: According to Aristotle, that feather shouldn't land for 74 days.
Even with air resistance, his theory is absurdly incorrect. Anyone who has ever dropped a feather from a height of 6 feet knows it lands in about 3 seconds. To bridge the gap between 3 seconds (Reality) and 74 days (Logic), you would need "Air Resistance" made of thick molasses or concrete, not oxygen.
The "Medium" Is a Mess
Aristotle claimed the Medium (air or water) was the only thing stopping objects from falling at infinite speed. He wrote the formula as:
Velocity ā Weight / Resistance
If this were true, a stone dropped in water (which is ~800x denser than air) should fall 800 times slower than in air. In reality, it sinks in about 2 seconds. Aristotle wasn't just "forgetting the vacuum"; he was hallucinating the basic mechanics of how objects move through any substance.
FINAL AUDIT: The theory wasn't just a "small mistake"āit was purely decorative logic. It required a version of Earth where feathers float for months and stones take ten minutes to hit the bottom of a bathtub. For 2,000 years, "The Scrutiny of the Masses" failed because people were more intimidated by "Formal Logic" than they were by the actual rocks hitting their toes. All you had to do was was drop a 20 pound stone and a 1 pound stone.
How Aristotle logically deduced that women have fewer teeth than men.
The truly "bullshit" part of this myth is the Access to Data. His dental theory required exactly five seconds of looking inside a mouth.
| Scenario | Aristotleās Requirement | Actual Reality |
|---|---|---|
| Data Acquisition | Perform deep philosophical meditation on "vital heat." | Ask your wife to open her mouth and point. |
| Adult Tooth Count | 32 for Men / ~28 for Women (Estimated) | 32 for Men / 32 for Women |
| The "Bias" Filter | The eyes see what the theory demands. | The teeth are right there. |
Aristotle was married twice. He lived in a city of thousands of people. Yet, he preferred his "Beautiful Logic" over the "Ugly Fact" that women have the exact same 32 teeth as men. He effectively lived in an Echo Chamber of One.
3. Why the "Bug" Persisted
Scrutiny doesn't work if the system is blinded by Authority.- 2,000 Years: The duration this "fact" stayed in textbooks.
- Zero Tests: The number of recorded anatomical counts that successfully challenged him until the Renaissance.
If the "Greatest Mind in History" said it, then any woman with 32 teeth was seen as a "freak outlier" rather than proof that the theory was garbage. Authority trumped Anatomy.
The Verdict: Aristotle's dental theory is the ultimate mockery of "Pure Reason." It proves that you can be a genius at how to think while being an absolute failure at what to think. He treated the human body like a "logical" problem where heād already decided the answer was "Less."
The Logic of the "Spontaneous Generation"
Aristotle looked at a piece of rotting meat, saw maggots, and instead of deducing that flies had visited, he decided the meat was "transforming" into life. This is a masterpiece of logical deductionāif you don't see the parent, the parent doesn't exist.
The Theory: Matter + "Vital Heat" = New Animal.
The Recipe:
- Dirty Rags + Wheat = Mice
- Rotting Meat + Heat = Flies
- Mud + Sun = Eels
This is absurdly incorrect even with the "Common Sense" excuse. He literally argued that complex organisms with hearts, brains, and digestive tracts just "phased" into existence because the mud felt a little warm that day.
The "Eel" Disaster
Aristotle spent years dissecting eels. Because he couldn't find their gonads (which only develop when they migrate to the ocean), he didn't conclude "I DON"T KNOW HOW THEY REPRODUCE." He concluded "They don't have parents."
Aristotle's Deduction: "I have looked at many eels. I see no eggs. Therefore, eels emerge from the 'earthworms' of the mud, which are born from the earth itself."
The Reality: Eels travel thousands of miles to the Sargasso Sea to spawn. Aristotle just didn't want to admit he missed the "Travel" variable.
His logic was: "If I can't see the mechanism, the mechanism is Magic."
The Scrutiny Failure (Again)
Just like the falling rocks and the women's teeth, the "Spontaneous Generation" myth survived on Systemic Blindness. For 2,000 years, nobody thought to put a piece of meat in a jar with a lid to see if "Magic" still happened.
- The Observation: "Every time I leave meat out, flies appear. There are flies all over the meat."
- The Scrutiny: "Maybe the flies laid eggs?"
- The Aristotle Block: "No, the meat is simply 'generating' the flies. The Philosopher says so. Do not question the meat."
It took until 1668 for Francesco Redi to perform the simplest experiment in history: Putting a mesh screen over a jar. Guess what? No flies spawned. The "Logic" was defeated by a piece of gauze.
FINAL AUDIT: Aristotle's "Spontaneous Generation" is the peak of his hilarity. It treats the universe like a glitchy simulation where entities just "pop" into the world because the "Spawn Logic" triggered. He ignored the most obvious variable (OBSERVATION) in favor of a mystical "Heat" that magically organized mud into complex nervous systems. It was pure, unadulterated bullshit.
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