Richard Thaler,a Business professor from the University of Chicago, has an interesting question:
I am doing research for a new book and would hope to elicit informed responses to the following question:
The flat earth and geocentric world are examples of wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods. Can you name your favorite example and for extra credit why it was believed to be true?
He’s gotten a number of interesting answers, and most are reasonable. Rupert Sheldrake, who is famous for his research into parapsychology, avoids self-serving shots at skepticism and talks about determinism. Lee Smolin resists the temptation to mention string theory.
For my money, it’s hard to beat the Four Humors theory of disease and human personality. According to this theory, which began in the ancient world, human disease and human temperaments were governed by the proportion of four substances in the human body: blood, phlegm, black and yellow bile.
Perhaps the only advantage of being poor in the middle ages was not having to deal with physicians who were trained in the four humors. Dealing with the chants and herbs of the village cunning woman would be bliss compared to being regularly bled by a trained doctor, and just as likely to be effective.
I can’t say why this was persuasive, except that it was probably the first systematic treatment of both disease and personality. It probably appealed to that type of person who wants big theories that explain everything at once. Since the humors could correspond to the four greek elements (fire, earth, air, water) it could be seen as a theory of nearly everything.
I also can’t explain why Tim LaHaye has apparently tried to bring back the four temperaments idea. Except that … it’s Tim LaHaye, and nonsense is what he does.
Is “markets regulates themselves” a scientific theory?
Well markets do regulate themselves it just when companies remove the “market” element from it or when the market does regulate itself in a rather spectacular fashion that we have problems!
As an aside I always think that it’s strangely ironic that companies that bleat on about being overly regulated need that same regulation to ensure that markets are relatively free to operate in.
Markets can’t regulate themselves because they have an utter lack of anticipation. For fucks sake, the market couldn’t anticipate the end of the 20th century!
Even if markets were purely reactive (which isn’t the case) this would still mean they can regulate themselves.
If markets could regulate themselves there would not be the word ‘monopoly’ nor laws to regulate it.
I guess one of the easiest beliefs was that the Norse Gods (in this case Thor with the hammer) caused thunder and lightning, when he rode across the skies in his cart. Perhaps not THAT scientific, but at least a religious belief science later easily dismissed.
I don’t remember this clearly, but it seems most norse Gods had some kind of thing like this that caused some phenomenon on earth.
See, all of these beliefs pre-date science. Or had actively been disproved by proto-science. I’m not quite sure how you can say that “flat Earth” or “geocentrism” are “scientific” beliefs.
Well… they WERE theories that agreed with the available data; the available data being that the Earth looked pretty flat (it still does, unless you go the extents Eratosthenes did). And the epicycles theory was good enough to account for celestial motions, until Kepler came along.
So I can say “Hey, it looks like clouds are made of cotton wool”, and that counts as a scientific theory?
It does if your name is Michel Behe.
No, but if you attempted to find an answer to the question “what are clouds made of?” and the answer “cotton wool” satisfied all available evidence, it would be a scientific hypothesis. However, since we know cotton wool would not float nor behave like clouds in other ways, there was never a point in human history at which this would be the case.
However, for a while the epicycles model was fantastically accurate at describing the motion of the planets around the Earth. In fact, if it is modified to take into account elliptical orbits, it is still an essentially valid model if we take the Earth to be stationary in an accelerated reference frame. It is just simpler to take the sun to be stationary instead.
The flat-Earth model is fairly accurate in the sense that the Earth is nearly flat at small scales (and the variations in elevation due to other factors far exceed the effect of the curvature of the Earth), but it was never able to explain other phenomena such as the horizon. It was more of a protoscientific idea than a real hypothesis.
My favorite idea is probably the ether hypothesis of light. The idea was that light propagated in some undetectable ether at c. However, when Michelson and Morley were unable to detect the Earth’s motion through this ether, the idea lost a lot of traction. There were still some theories in which the ether was somehow dragged along with the Earth, but they were pretty flimsy and contrived. Einstein’s theory of relativity eventually superseded with the ether theory entirely.
My favorite idea is probably the ether hypothesis of light. The idea was that light propagated in some undetectable ether at c. However, when Michelson and Morley were unable to detect the Earth’s motion through this ether, the idea lost a lot of traction. There were still some theories in which the ether was somehow dragged along with the Earth, but they were pretty flimsy and contrived. Einstein’s theory of relativity eventually superseded with the ether theory entirely.
This would be my vote as well.
Actually this was a case of preaching to the choir. Thous committed to aether theory predicted that the experiment would not detect motion, and had an explanation (I forget what it was exactly) why the experiment would fail.
Scientific text books like to make Science look like slow and gradual progress. However the reality is more uneven. And involves a lot more accident and politics then scientists like to admit.
of course, the herbs were probably better, in that there was at least a possibility of some sort of therapeutic action…
Kim Stanley Robinson managed to line up the four temperaments with actual personality dimensions quite well in the Mars trilogy, though, so maybe there was some basis in observation.
Whoa…. deja vu…
When I used to work for a Giant Entity everybody got to go through “personality studies”. Each person would get to answer a loooong list of questions on how they felt or would react about certain situations. How they reacted placed them in one of four categories: the four categories from that diagram….
I always wondered about where they picked up those weird names. Boy, does it make me feel sooooo much better that they were drawn from hoohaw. Sooooo much better.
Cigarettes are healthy.
I wonder how many scientific minds actually believed that or if it was more just due to the Tobacco companies pushing that message. Still a good one though.
My favorite: the Hamitic hypothesis
” why it was believed to be true?” racism
“scientific beliefs that were held for long periods”
Some of these not really fitting the criteria. This one, however, was foundational to the study of the linguistics and history of Africa. It’s corrupting effects are still with us.
Well obviously black people must have been cursed; otherwise they wouldn’t be our slaves! And the reason they can be our slaves is because they were cursed by God. See?
But this was not just folk culture. These were scholars. They based their understanding of African history and culture upon the Hamitic hypothesis.
You liberalz and your pc. Why are you talking about Ham to the exclusion of Shem and Japheth???? Just because Ham ended up in Cush doesn’t mean that you must give disproportionate time and attention to Hamites in your discussion here. Humph!
:P
LOL
heh heh
Yeah I know, I am always baffled looking back at “scientific racism” from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Admittedly, the more scientifically minded people didn’t base their theories off passages of the Bible, but the ideas nevertheless were rooted in them in less obvious ways.
This is what makes this so curious, Michael. When I went searching for the origins of the Hamitic hypothesis that’s exactly where I ended up. Scholars (Joseph Greenberg comes to mind) basing their theories, albeit by convoluted means, upon biblical myth.
I always found it strange that they seemed to forget about all the cases of caucasian slavery that came before hand or were still going on. Rome would likely never have been the same power house that it was without slavery, are your race didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the Romans had conquered you. Leadind up to the civil war, one of the main counters against slavery was the fact that muslim nations, such as Egypt, Morroco and Algeria , were taking (white) American’s as slaves. They even used the same logic to defend it, between Islam and that if they were freed they would become social burdens as they no longer know how to survive on their own.
On a side note, Michael B. Oren’s book Power, Faith and Fantasy about America’s relation with the middle-east is an awesome read. No, I was not paid to type that.
I still say it’s the one flawed “study” that “proved” marriage makes people happier and healthier.
Bella DePaulo describes how the “study” did this:
” Marriage makes you happy, as long as you discount all of the people who got married, were unhappy and got divorced, and also discount all of the people who were also unhappy but stayed married. We are now very, very far afield from the 2007 claim that marriage makes you happy.”
She links to the easy-to-read Pew study that actually looked for facts instead of distorting them, which showed very strong evidence otherwise.
But it’s the “zombie fact” that people refuse to let die: if you just quote others’ quotes quoting others’ quotes quoting others’ quotes about it, wish upon a star, and close your eyes, clap your hands, and believe in faeries, and let “studies” use grossly distorted non-representative populations, then maybe everyone from so-called “singles” columnists to Time Magazine to national newspapers can make it come true.
The homunculus inside sperm. Why was it believed? Beats the crap out of me.
The idea that emotions and consciousness reside in the heart. ” ”
the tabula rasa theory of mental development in children. Believed because the people accepting the theory spent as little time as possible in the presence of children.
It seems to me that before the 19th century it’s pretty hard to pick out what is a “scientific” belief as opposed to a popular or philosophical belief.
A recent example: We were probably all raised to think that albinism in cave animals such as amphibians and insects had something to do with adaptation to a sunless environment. Turns out the reason has more to do with genome linkage, and the albinism is a coincidental result of other mutation. Keep your eyes open for the results of ongoing studies by Bill Jeffery, U of MD.
Because the alternative was that women were not mere incubators, but would also pass on *their* traits to the next generation. Which was clearly laughable.
http://www.oglaf.com/son-of-kronar/
how we get barbarians (NSFW)
don’t forget to click forward one to see how we get wolfskin rugs.
As a healthcare professional the one that I hear every single day and which makes me want to tear my hair out in chunks: “My Grandma smoked sixty a day since she was eight years old and lived to one hundred and two”.
AAAARGH! Even if that’s true every time I hear it, I bet granny spent the last two decades of her life in bed on oxygen – and frankly, Granny got lucky! The vast majority of life-long, heavy smokers DON’T get lucky – they suffer terrible chronic disabilities and horrible, slow, painful deaths.
/rant
My mother’s mother and father smoked heavily. She had emphysema (sp?) and they both died horrible, long, drawn out deaths of congestive heart failure in their early to mid sixties.
Smoking = bad, bad, bad!!!!
I’ve seen a *shocking* amount of COPD sufferers who still smoke.
Well that’s more a misconception than a paradigm, though.
Kind of, it’s to do with external locus of control; the belief that nothing they do can make a difference to their own lives and that everything is down to external factors (like “genetics”). Same reason that people with external locus of control eat badly, never exercise and tend to be poor. Look at succesful, rich non-smokers with good health: INTERNAL locus of control, one and all. Speaking of which, time to go work out.
Of course, the truth is that it needs to be a balance. Too far towards an internal locus of control and you get Mike Adams’ position of “if you get cancer it’s because your diet was insufficiently pure”.
My personal favorite (as a neurobiology geek) is the soul theory of mind. People who are dualists about mind and brain think that the mind is somehow magically separate from the brain and is the essence of the soul. Descartes went so far as to say that the mind and brain (or the soul and body) interacted through the pineal gland. Ha!
Alas, these folks cannot explain why it is that brain damage so clearly and evidently alters the mind.
Good one LRA. Look at people who’ve had brain injuries and have become totally different people – Brain = self = NOT set in stone!
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html
Or, they just grow up. Every time I hear about someone being executed for a crime they committed when they were a minor, I reflect upon the fact that I was a completely different person as a teenager. By age 25, about all that remained of that teenage personality was a fondness for chocolate.
I’ve always like phlogiston theory, if only because it said things were “dephlogisticated” when burnt.
The idea of dividing people up into ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph, and associating those body types with inherent abilities and personality traits is something I find odd. I’m not sure if this qualifies as a “scientific” theory, however.
I’m pretty sure it does qualify. I recall seeing it in a very try tract on sports medicine in the 1960s.
Also, it occurs to me that the “meridian” theories of acupuncture qualify, since they were (are) widely accepted in China as valid medical practice.
Chiropractic medicine, for one.
Theory of Phlogiston, where heat is merely a fluid (whose medium we can’t really observe) made up of two mediums, on for hot and one for cold. Albeit we still did not have the means to measure the atom, but was still more halfassed than the ether hypothesis.
Meanwhile, the acceptance of the Thompson model of the atom was also a wtf as it basically described the nucleus as a smear of positive charge. Smear is obviously the most unambiguous and palpable definition ever.
I seam to remember there being some description of the atom as having positive and negative charges sort of plopped in the atom like raisins in pudding. Or something like that.
It never made much sense to me. The Bohr model is much more reasonable (though still wildly inaccurate for large atoms).
That would be the Thompson model. Apologies for neglecting the electrons, but they were point charges, the raisins, in the smear of positive pudding.
I also go with the flat earth and, more on the social science side, tabula rasa. The tabula rasa – to me, though I haven’t studied it – seems to go along with the belief that, since people are “blank slates”, or born in sin, they therefore need religion, to be taught morals through fear of punishment.
Or that treating the symptoms in the economy will ever work.
I used to think a representative government became outdated in the electronic age, but people are becoming such gross ignoramuses that I’m no longer sure. Problem: the ones they vote for are gonna reflect that. Alaska, Delaware, and the tea party, I’m lookin’ at you!
That is a great picture of the four humors! After reading the occasional reference to them all my life, that picture is really neat.
The elemental theories of matter. The most well known is the Greek Four elements of Earth Fire water and Air. However there where also five element systems. In China Metal was considered distinct from Earth, and in the Norse regions Ice was considered distinct from water.
In China these 5 elements also corresponded with the 4 cardinal directions and the center- and with colors, flavors, etc.
seems to go along with the belief that, since people are “blank slates”, or born in sin, they therefore need religion
Er, I’ve never heard Locke’s (and Aquinas’, Avicenna’s, and Aristotle’s) theory about people being blank slates having any implication about being “born in sin” or needing religion and punishment to mature. Quite the contrary, tabula rasa would imply that there is no inborn sinful nature or thought at all, and that those would have to be provided by experiences in the world. IIRC, St. Bonaventure freaked out on Aquinas for this very reason, that his theory of mind seems to deny the doctrine of original sin.
A shark will drown if it stops swimming. It was believed because it was thought that sharks lack the muscles to pump water over their gills and so needed to keep moving to keep water flowing over them. It is now known that they can pump enough water to keep oxygenated although there are about a dozen of the 400 or so shark species that can´t.
All right! I feel better for sharks.
They’ve been doing fine without me (up until people have been endangering them. Happy to see some advocacy and “saving” groups.). But still liked hearing this.
I always thought any evidence that a person was a witch fit into this category. My favorite is that witches float in water (because water rejects anything Satanic) and that innocent people sink.
In theory, innocent people were supposed to be rescued.
The physiological theory of crime; physical characteristics implicate a tendency to criminal behavior (such as head shape, left-handedness, etc.).
Sinister people are not to be trusted!
Is numerology a paradigm? I used to be obsessed with it.
Oh yeah? What’s the deal with the number 7?
I don’t know but I heard he ate nine.
Why is octal-6 not afraid of 7?
Because 7 10 11!
A side note to the humours theory was that evil or bad humours were thought to rise and as a result one of my former employers, Ridge State Home and Training school near Denver was built on a hill in the 1800′s as a place for both the retarded and mentally ill – there really was no distinction between the two at the time. By placing them on the hill, it prevented their humours from infecting the rest of the population.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned phrenology, especially given how frequently one can see phrenology heads in the background in various movies, tv shows, etc. Given the prevalence you would think the theory was still in popular medical use today.
The interesting thing about that is that phrenology was on the right side of the big neurological argument of its day: Are different brain functions localized into specific areas, or can any part of the brain do any type of processing?
Take out the idea that more highly-developed parts of the brain push on and deform the skull, and you have a basically good idea of how the brain’s organized.
That’s true! Of course the path from one theory to the next wasn’t direct, but it’s nice to see the scientific process in play. Perhaps its similarity to what we now perceive to be accurate is why we still hold on to the phrenologists’ guide as an attractive decorative piece.
Essentialism, wait, does anybody still believe that?