{"id":788,"date":"2014-07-08T16:55:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-08T21:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/?p=788"},"modified":"2017-03-26T19:59:03","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T00:59:03","slug":"there-was-madness-to-their-method-the-western-world-before-the-scientific-method","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/?p=788","title":{"rendered":"There was Madness to Their Method: The Western World Before the Scientific Method"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 217px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"science.howstuffworks.com\/innovation\/scientific-experiments\/10-things-we-thought-were-true-before-scientific-method.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/e\/e3\/Mary_Toft_Howard_Andr%C3%A9.jpg\" alt=\"Cartoon of Mary Toft's doctors.\" width=\"217\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;My money&#8217;s on a lop-eared doe, or perhaps a Britannia Petite.&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>One of the many things I enjoy about teaching my university class, Science, Feuds, Scandals and Hoaxes, is the opportunity to explore some of the most outrageous ideas ever to gain traction in the public mind. It\u2019s easy to make fun today, but some of these ideas were grounded in reasoning that, though flawed, eventually gave rise to the right answer. Then again, there\u2019s really no defending those doctors who thought that woman was giving birth to rabbit parts.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/science.howstuffworks.com\/innovation\/scientific-experiments\/10-things-we-thought-were-true-before-scientific-method.htm\" target=\"_blank\">10 Things We Thought Were True Before the Scientific Method<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the many things I enjoy about teaching my university class, Science, Feuds, Scandals and Hoaxes, is the opportunity to explore some of the most outrageous ideas ever to gain traction in the public mind. It\u2019s easy to make fun today, but some of these ideas were grounded in reasoning that, though flawed, eventually &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/?p=788\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">There was Madness to Their Method: The Western World Before the Scientific Method<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,22,63,54,82,4,85,67,475,86,74,415,3,30,207],"tags":[871,24,880,870,869,874,872,877,61,263,92,55,5,879,878,25,58,876,873,221,875],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-biochemistry","category-culture","category-electromagnetism","category-health","category-history","category-mathematics","category-medicine","category-neuroscience-science","category-philosophy","category-physics","category-psychology","category-science","category-top-10","category-weird","tag-antichthon","tag-behavior","tag-blood","tag-counter-earth","tag-deduction","tag-element","tag-epicycle","tag-epigenesis","tag-food","tag-gravity","tag-humor","tag-induction","tag-inventors","tag-maternal-impression","tag-miasma","tag-nature","tag-planets","tag-preformation","tag-retrograde","tag-satellites","tag-spontaneous-generation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions\/791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}