'Modern science catches up with Ancient Knowledge'



Yes, I know, this is a much reviled cliche.

However, I am aware of one or two cases where it is true. For example, many of the ancients believed meteorites to originate from beyond our planet. The scientific community dismissed this as superstitious nonsense up until the late 18th century, and martian metoeries were not actually confirmed until the late 20th century.

Does anyone know of any further examples where the ancients were the first to get it right?

The only ones I can think of are not really science having gotten it wrong, but using traditional sources of information for new "discoveries". Biologists studying species in new areas (like rainforests) will now question local, indigenous people about animals and plants they are familiar with. Similarly, people researching new drugs from natural sources will check out traditional cures for sources of new compounds.

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Cite?

The ancients tended to think that the heavens were perfect and thus did NOT have a bunch a rubble in it. Don't confuse people who claimed that rock fell from the sky (probably because they observed a fall) with a general belief that rocks came from outer space.

IIRC scientific views about meteorites being 'superstition' derived mostly from the post-Renaissance view that the Heavens were perfect, thus if one believed that then there couldn't be rocks falling from a 'prefect' place. So I'd say science, when muddled heavily by religion and lack of critical thinking, came to an erroneous conclusion.

One example of ancient knowledge is Democritus postulating the existance of atoms, though his view was not widely accepted in even his own time, nor did he have any evidence of them. His hypothesis of the existance of atoms was due to a thought experiment.

Black holes were postulated in the 17th or 18th century, again as a thought experiment without any concrete data.

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Good point.

I can't find the fascinating article I read just recently, but a quick Google produces
http://www.unmuseum.org/rocksky.htm

Wouldn't that be "pre-Renaissance"?

OK, Ford!

Right on. Funny how the muddled folks love to use examples of muddled conclusions to try to prove science doesn't work. All it proves is muddled is as muddled does, even if the muddler has a Ph.D.

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Nope. I was thinking 16th to 19th century. Post-Renaissance. Here's a website that briefly touches on it:

Oops. Although I like the thought of a prefect place.

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Now while I might be amused by Cthulhians, I don't necessarily distrust them to carry out the functions of government. -- JayUtah

What's it like being a skeptic in the Middle East? Check out my blog.

Perhaps I shouldn't have made a break where I did. Here's the complete quote I was discussing.

I was focused more on the "Heavens were perfect" part than the "stones falling from the heavens were considered superstition" part. I thought that Galileo's (and subsequently, others') observations of the Moon, Sun, etc., during the 17th century demolished this "perfect heavens" idea that gained prominence with Aristotle and was de rigeur during the Dark Ages.

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Don't forget ancient man's ability to make stone weapons that were a molecule thick at the cutting edge. Pretty good for banging rocks against each other.

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I remember when I was 5 years old I drew a map of the solar system. I put rings around all of the outer planets except Pluto (mainly because I couldn't remember which one had the ring). My older siblings scoffed at me because everybody "knows" that only Saturn has rings. It wasn't till I was in my 20s that the astronomers "discovered" what I knew when I was 5.

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I think there are clear examples where knowledge gets forgotten and then is rediscovered later. One example is the Copernican system. I think that maybe the Egyptians or something thought the earth went around the sun, but then this was rejected by Ptolemy (sorry if I've got my facts all wrong). And also perhaps the concept of zero was known by some in more ancient times (or was that algebra?) but was then forgotten and only recovered later. Also, for example, the Mayan calendar was much more accurate than the Julian calendar, and it was only with the Gregorian calendar that we "regained" this accuracy. I put the regained in quotations because it wasn't the same civilization, so it doesn't really make sense to speak that way. More like, we rediscovered.

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Hey, you were lucky enough to have siblings with (at least mild) interests in astronomy.

with regards

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Scientists discover that love can make you crazy.I think everyone pretty much already knew that one.

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The Roman's had concrete. This engineering science was lost for over 1500 years, not to be regained until the industrial revolution.

Brain surgery that the Mayans performed: draining pressure from the cranium.

Pottery was invented then lost on the Japanese archipelago way before the Japanese even arrived.

Sea going transport that the Australian Aboriginals must have had thousands of years before any other proof of this ability anywhere else. However, I concede that this could have transpired earlier---maybe when man left Africa.

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I know of a doctor in the Pacific Northwest who uses obsidian to make his own scalpels, because they're sharper and hold an edge better than metal ones.

Catastrophism I should think.

Sadly--everyone is subject to dogma. In a zeal to find support for the Deluge, many young Earthers found evidence that some layers could be laid down--and that some geologic features could be done quickly (by ice damn collapse it turned out--the Flood being the Black Sea or the Med spilling in from the Atlantic--perhaps--another bit of ancient memory).

The gradualists--aka 'Uniformitarians' (even sounds like a dogmatic denomination) who were Darwinists thought "These are just a bunch of holy rollers--who needs to listen to them?" But even if they got everything else right (besides the ladder model vs. the bush model of branching) and the young earthers got everything else wrong--the latter did nail the reality of catastrophism.

S.J. Gould's Natural History article (in The Panda's Thumb) dealt with this--the article's title was called "The Great Scablands Debate."

Now is the Earth 6,000 yr. old? No. But did dogma get in the way of science from the Darwin-supporters--yes. Anybody can be fooled.

This dogma from gradualists lasted well into the 20th Century--with mainstream scientists actually believing that asteroid craters on the moon were Maar type volcanoes. Even when no lava could be found--Barringer was called 'crypto-volcanic' or 'crypto-explosive' by gradualists.

Then came Walter and Luis Alvarez. Sadly--once Gene Shoemaker died--the gradualists have begun to re-assert themselves, and question KT--and even though shocked-quartz and shatter-cones have been found in a chain of craters in the US (Earth magazine--I forget the issue) the words 'crypto-explosive' and such have been working their way back due to lava of different ages being found.

While science is 'never wrong' the belief in that adage can shut out possibilities--even if it doesn't always support the non-conformist either. Science claims no dogma--and that unlike religion is self-correcting--but the sad fact is that humans are still involved in both.

I had this image of scientists as being wise and selfless people who loved to share information. Boy did I get that wrong. Once, while tornado chaser Matt Biddle was in town after the April 8, 1998 F-5 in Birmingham, I helped him in research for a paper. I went to UAB to meet with a Doctor (Loring Rue) and thought we would have this nice round table discussion.

But all I got was the fifth degree: "What do you want this information for? What are you here for?" Russ Fine--a talk radio personality who also works in epidemiology at UAB, stood up for me at least.

What with the fights for funding--and the egos, and the televangelists--it is no wonder the New Age movement wants to deny old standards of Faith and Reason--turning their backs on both.


I think a bridge is needed. There are four beliefs out there--

The New Ager--when he thinks of a scientist, or a preacher--thinks of the angry white male--and there is something too that--as the Victorian social darwinists were not very friendly people. Atheists say "well all you religious people are fooling yourself." Preachers will say that we aknowledge how the New Ages recognise God--and agnostics recognise nature's rules, but the former in wishy-washy ideology have God but no rules--and the latter have rules but no God. We believe in both.

Then come the "which rules?" and it slides downhill.

So where one side advocated Faith over reason--and the other Reason first--and the extremists drive people away from both to where they go New Age--there is a fourth option to include both---even Carl Sagan, in advocating talks between both sides to quell the new age and its lack of discipline--understands (like the Founders) that it is important to have the voices of both Faith and Reason--otherwise the public--which cares little about such things--will accept neither.

So if the intel. design forks are fooling themselves with ideology--we must applaud the first step and join forces against the young earthers--otherwise the backlash will just hurt the cause of science even more.

It's like accepting a sticker on a textbook--because at least the kid learns something--where if you adopt the 'not give an inch' attitude--parents just home school more--and the kid learns even less about science, which gets re-defined in a school board.

By adopting the O'Hare stance--you win the arguement but lose the war--unlike Scopes, which was right the opposite.

Does that make any sense?

I think it was Joseph Needham and his team who spent a decade or three going through old Chinese texts, looking to chronicle the development of science and technology in China, pre-colonial times.

Among other things, along the way, they discovered a wealth of 'working knowledge' that had no counterpart in the west until many centuries later. They also turned up some interesting stuff that, interpreted with the 'hindsight' of modern chemistry (etc) proved to be quite valuable (and which modern chemists hadn't been aware of).

However, a key difference remains - while in ancient China much was known 'operationally' that subsequently was lost or overlooked, it was only with the Renaissance that a framework for understanding all this in a more general sense came into being.

This suggests looking at a different question - what is science? and a myriad of related questions, such as how did our modern conceptions of science arise? which parts of what we today call science were 'discovered/invented' by 'ancients' and subsequently lost? can 'science' change (or is it eternal)? if we had a time machine and could travel 100 or 1000 years into the future, how different would what folk at those times call 'science' differ from what we consider it to be?

and so on.

Great topic P.Asmah! =D>

seems too me that some voices are a bit strident.

When Queen Victoria became monarch that England, and thus the rest of the Empire, were in a moral morass. She created, over a few decades, a puritanical environment. Sexuality was marginalized: out and out ignored for 60 years. Was this bad? Johnson and et all could have happened earlier without the moralizing; however, it would be unlikely that other GREAT steps would have taken place.

Science has taken a back set in other places as well.

The Chinese example is a great example. Science was sacrificed in the 15th century for political stability.

WE are doing this now.

Science is not always lost because we are stupid, it may be lost(or suppressed) because of political or religious will.

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Not in their mythology, at least. In Egyptian mythology, the sun circles the earth, passing through a dangerous realm of caves and monsters while we have night up here. Of course, Greek philosophers tended to push the mythology to the sidelines in their search for truth, and I imagine Egyptians did too; I don't know what they came up with. I do know they had fairly advanced surveying techniques, developed in part because the annual flooding of the Nile made standard boun