Russell's letter (below) painfully reminds me how easily one can slip into
uncritical perpetuation of what may be academic myth...
- I have been telling what I suspect is the same story for years, but in my
version, late medieval scholars were so perversely unempirical as to believe
Aristotle on the number of teeth per horse. Aristotle happened to get it wrong,
but anybody who did look in the mouth of a local horse would conclude that
their particular nag was an exception, because The Philosopher could not be
wrong.
- I have no source other than a vague memory that some Prof told the same story
in class many years ago. A fortiori, I have never even bothered to search
Aristotle to see if he did in fact comment on equine dentition.
-I do not, in fact, know how many teeth a horse has, and if I wanted to know,
I'd very probably look it up in the modern equivalent of Aristotle. (Excuse: I
was once bit by a horse -- shall I nominate Equine Empiricophobia for the next
version of DMS?)
Mea culpa,
-David
Russell T. Hurlburt wrote:
> I used in class the other day (talking about the importance of the
> empirical method) an example from Isaac Newton. Philosophers of Newton's
> day speculated about how many teeth horses had. One said it must be 24
> because of the size of the jaw; another said it must be 32 based on
> Pythagorean principles, and so on. Newton cut through that philosophical
> speculation by simply looking in the horse's mouth.
>
> Then a student asked what was my source for this story, and I had to
> confess that I couldn't remember the source, nor did I know for sure
> whether the story was true or apocryphal, or whether it really was about
> Newton, or whether I made the whole thing up.
>
> Can anyone with a better memory than I have point me in the direction of a
> confirmation or disconfirmation of this story?
>
> Thanks.
> --Russ
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David G. Likely, Department of Psychology,
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, N. B., E3B 5A3 Canada
History of Psychology:
http://www.unb.ca/web/psychology/likely/psyc4053.htm
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