Let's Find Out - Incredibly Old Book from 1658 | Science, History, Myth, Folklore | ASMR Soft-spoken

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

It's not quite the original Sumerian Tablets of Gilgamesh, but this is BY FAR my oldest book yet. Tonight's book was published in 1658 by Dr. Thomas Brown, titled, "Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or Enquiries into Very many Received Tenets, and Commonly Presumed Truths," also known simply as "Pseudodoxia Epidemica" or "Vulgar Errors." It's a work challenging and refuting the "vulgar" or common errors and superstitions of Brown's age. The work was in the vanguard of work-in-progress scientific journalism during the 17th-century scientific revolution and includes evidence of his adherence to the Baconian method of empirical observation of nature. And as we'll see throughout its pages, frequent examples of Browne's subtle humor can also be found. Browne's three determinants for obtaining truth were the authority of past scholarly works, the act of reason, and empirical experience. Each of these determinants is employed upon subjects ranging from common folklore to the cosmological. Subjects covered in Pseudodoxia Epidemica are arranged in accordance to the time-honoured Renaissance scale of creation; the learned doctor essaying on the nature of error itself (Book 1), continuing with fallacies in the mineral, vegetable (Book 2), and animal (Book 3) kingdoms onto errors concerning Man (Book 4), Art (Book 5), Geography and History (Book 6), and finally Astronomy and the Cosmos (Book 7). Pseudodoxia Epidemica was a valuable source of information which found itself upon the shelves of many homes in seventeenth century England. Being in the vanguard of the scientific writing, it paved the way for much subsequent popular scientific journalism and began a decline in the belief in mythical creatures. 0:00 Unboxing 14:15 Book Reveal 23:20 Table of Contents and Ceremonial Candle Lighting 55:50 Reading ▸ Want to leave a tip or connect?: https://linktr.ee/letsfindoutasmr history #books #letsfindout #ASMR #relaxing #mythology #science

So this evening we got a book that is over 300 years old. I forget exactly how old, so we're going to find out when we open this up. And I think it's closer to 350 years old. I'm not sure what adjective I'm going to use in the title and thumbnail to describe just how ridiculously old it is. But it's really nice packaging. So we're gonna get some ASMR out of it. This old, still in reasonably good shape.

I don't think it's not in as good as shape as some of these other books we have here. But the fact that it's this old is, for me, it's really priceless. Only I do have a limit, so I do have a price. But now that I have it, it's priceless. I think does have a price. So you guys let me know if you can pay my mortgage for a year. that it might not be so priceless. At times it's, you know, other thrift book sites online.

But you'd be surprised. I actually had a little bidding more with someone at the very end. I wasn't going to pay more than 50 bucks initially, but in the format of having a bidding more in the last 30 seconds after watching an item for, you know, a couple of. days is really addictive addicting it's really um really fun as long as you don't go over what you you know wanted to spend which i kind of did you know i think i think books especially books this old in books like this one then have some substance to them they um they just a

value, the accrue interest. So it's not a depreciating asset. It's a very much an appreciating asset. It's like real estate for the most part. So let's go ahead and this package. Let's get into this fragile. Very historic. I love the fact that some people bring up is that I wonder what the authors or the printers of the book would have thought if they could or if he could look centuries ahead he or she and seeing the destiny, the fate of one of their books, just being shown a few thousand people, these magical video photograph devices. All right, how are we going to break into this? It feels like there's some cardboard there, so I don't think I'm going to risk popping it careless as I was about to be.

So this took a nice long trip over. I'd imagine in an airplane, but you know at the same time might have been in a ship container ship or something So of conditions this book was exposed to but my judgment was to leave it in the packaging So then it didn't get exposed to the human Florida heat My house sometimes gets a little hot, but I don't know maybe maybe I should have opened it up. It's been sitting in the room for a couple weeks now So hopefully I didn't ruin the book keep you guys guessing so this thing looks like it was pretty well Packaged up pretty happy with this actually got here pretty darn quick under two weeks maybe within like 10 days copies of it, but they did more layers we have here Hopefully I'll put the actual book in the timestamp so you guys can skip this if you want to

But if you don't want to skip in, doing my best to be somewhat graceful. Knife's better, which is awesome because this book is really, really old. It's a really old book. I've been bummed out if they just wrapped it up in some thin plastic envelopes. I don't think it even had the front cover. The tape here in 58, you can remember that they, or realize that they didn't use Roman numerals. I thought before a certain date, certainly before 1700s. They exclusively used Roman numerals, but I guess it's not the case.

It's colored in my hand, printing press. Put in the human, human arts and experience such a unique feel is the imperfections. You know, it feels very moist. Feels very like human, not crispy and dry, like some books do. So that's why I'm bending the pages. Real tactile here. And maybe in 10 or 20 years, we'll have smell of vision by then. Book is, uh, what do we say?

About 350 years old. Sudodoxia. Epidemica. Or inquiries. Enquiries into very many. received tenets and commonly presumed truths. There's that S kind of shaped like an F. And we found out for my last video that the reason

has something to do with the different way you stress the S. Kind of like you can have short and long vowels. You can have a short or long S presumed. So it's less of a short S, more of a short S, more of a along almost a z sound to it. This brown doctor of physics. Again that's physic, physics, instead of physic, physic,

fisc, correct it. An X sound C and the T, they connected. I guess I got rid of that, the F, F looking S in the CT connection. mid to late 1700s. The third edition corrected and enlarged by the author together with some marginal observations in a table alphabetical at the end, alphabetical with two L's.

Ex Libres, man, hopefully someone can translate that. Ex Libreis, Collegier, quapridaeurant, quapro-ditorant, co-proditorant, author was longest or est, periculo, and I don't know if those are Fs or S's, but very aerobos. It was really interesting from the perspective of almost, you know, very early nascent enlightenment times, or maybe not quite nascent, but before the full blooming or budding, of the Enlightenment and science, kind of in the throes or the beginnings maybe of the scientific revolution.

We have 1658 in inquiry into many commonly presumed truths. So this is kind of like a debunking book, a skeptics. You know, a book for skeptics. I know what this book is so old, I think we gotta light a candle just for tradition's sake. Let's find that movie. A box, old book.

It was probably read by candlelight until like 100 years ago. So let's make it at home. So this book, yeah, I mean, for the skeptical value, it's like, what would Michael Sherman write? 350 years ago. So this is, I already fell off here, so let's look, let's take a close-up look here. Table of contents, the first book, and I'm not sure if this is book number one, or if you have all books together in this volume, said of the first cause of common errors, the common infirmity of humane nature, a further illustration of the same.

Chapter 2. Chapter 3 is the the second cause of popular errors the erroneous disposition of the people of the nearer

causes of commiser and common sort misapprehension fallacy and false deduction credulity supinity that's that word right I feel like so many of you are so

helpful in figuring out ways to translate or kind of understand the wording. Adherence onto antiquity, tradition, and authority contained in the following chapters. Antiquity philosophy, he talked about how Aristotle defined. He was known as the philosopher to medieval Europe. and so for almost 1,500 years, and that's kind of like interesting connection to this book, is that 1658? They're just emerging out of the dominant influence

of the Christian spiritual, religious paradigm informed with the kind of academic arm. And for anyone who actually knows this stuff out here, forgive me for probably getting it you're either wrong or you know really really oversimplifying it here but from what I understand Aristotle was so revered and he because he was so prolific in his time the Greeks and then the Romans and then civilizations, monks and Muslims, Arabs, and early Christians in Europe all copied his texts so they got transmitted through monasteries and different universities, early

academic institutions. And what that meant is that his speculation about natural phenomena. got transmitted as well. And so the obstinate adherence into antiquity or unto antiquity to me might be some sort of hint. We'll have to read it to really find out, but some sort of reference to the fact that for almost 2,000 years, 1,500 years, many of the observations if they didn't directly contradict the gospel or the Bible, they were just assumed to be true of the observations and speculations of Aristotle,

which he might have gotten many right, and some say that he even, say, anticipated evolution. Maybe not, though. But I do remember one thing that Will Durant said was that one thing that can't be forgiven was Aristotle's assertion that women had fewer teeth, I think, than men. And Will Durant, of course, in his humorous way of writing, said that, you know, that might be a tell-tale sign that Aristotle wasn't as familiar with women as he was men to get such an easily falsifiable or easily testable thing wrong.

Anyways, I'm curious. This whole book for me was like a really, really interesting look at what the of an early scientist, someone emerging out of a worldview dominated by mostly Christian. This was printed in London and be Christian for sure. Boom. Paradime. Everything was spiritual. Everything was ordained and ordained by God and manipulated and motivated by angels and spiritual powers and forces.

And on top of that, think about all the superstitions. And that must have evolved and, you know, passed on from generation to generation. Thousands of years in England. And I guess wider Europe, maybe. You know, a lot of it, you know, wife's tales and a lot of it, not necessarily false, but it's interesting that not only to find out what they are, but to find out how they might be debunked by this guy, Thomas Brown. And now, physics here, I was going to say he was a physicist, you know, of the early sort.

But that actually might mean physiology. I'm actually curious what he was. Maybe you guys can look that up, Thomas Brown, Dr. of physics. I think always with our unboxing. things we're not going to get through much of this book. I just wanted to open it up, take a look at it, and we'll do some follow-up videos on it. So the second book, beginning the particular part concerning mineral and vegetable moddies,

that crystal is nothing else but ice strongly congealed. That's interesting. It looks like we're missing this here. Looks like it was cut with scissors. Just clean off. Maybe it was just about to rip the rest of the page. Or maybe someone didn't want their name on YouTube. This looks like either ink or wax splatter right there.

Maybe some of you guys already noticed that. But I'm really sure what you guys are able to see. Anyways, I'll post a picture. Is that better? Again, you know, the, they were doing kind of libraries, what kind of rooms and houses this book might have seen. I mean, maybe it was in the same house for 200 years, and then, you know, another 200 years in the same house.

Or maybe it changed hands and was in used bookstores. Maybe he was on a ship, traveling around the world. Maybe it's been continents. It's part of the mystery of him. I love it. Let's adjust our light again but concerning the

lodestones of things particularly spoken thereof evidently and probably true of things generally believed and particularly delivered evidently and probably false of the magnetical virtue of the earth.

Very spiritual way of talking about the natural world. And, you know, it's even interesting to break down that our modern paradigm, because we're able to sciences so powerful that objectively finding isolating natural phenomena, you know, chemical reactions and, you know,

different, uh, just anything. and physical laws that we think of. We're trained nowadays to think of the natural world, things outside our brains, as being these lifeless, dead, just objects that we can manipulate and have no soul or spiritual significance. But here they're talking about how there's a magnetical virtue of the earth,

A magnetic field that moves a compass Is a virtue of the earth That uh You know that's This is pre A slightly pre Uh slightly before Newton

pierced the veil Of the universe with his Insight Into gravity And its development of Alongside Independently of but alongside Leibniz.

So yeah, it's just amazing that, you know, Descartes and Galileo, this was contemporary with the 15 and 1600s, the great scientists who were planting the seeds for greater, later scientific revolutionaries like Newton and Hook and Boyle, Darwin eventually and Lord Raleigh, Raleigh. I mean, all these great scientists that generation after generation built our and changed the way we perceive the world

by building the scientific paradigm through experiment in discovery, development of mathematical explanations and descriptions of reality that engineers and machinists were able to develop and use to build more and more powerful steam engines and complex, you know, devices and machines

like the... Yeah, what's that, boards of Canada? Yeah, just the amazing clock-like mechanical objects that were able to, you know, be run on steam kind of when you think of a steampunk society the inventions that the 17 and 1800s scientists were able to come up with before electricity was harnessed and before long before nuclear energy was known it's really amazing and how how it changed the world led to the Industrial Revolution and the mass

production of of consumer goods, clothes and textiles and the mass refinery of ores to make more and machines. It's amazing. So I think we all underestimate just how much the world has changed from 1658. Everything was magical and I'm being romantic I know but everything was much more alive. God was whatever your God was. Yahweh Allah God.

Jesus. Religious view you know it still is to a lot of people but not nearly as many nowadays. The religious view literally informed. It was an unconscious filter that everybody looked through without realizing they were looking through it because, and not that we're completely separated from it,

but sciences made it harder to live in a spiritual world, I think. Anyways, so that's three pages into this. Enough of my rambling. A reflection or a rejection of sundry, opinions and relations thereof, natural, medical, historical, magical, of bodies electrical. Is this trying to see if ashes have volume

that kills without report? They hardeneth, hardeneth, and china dishes lie under the earth in a hundred years in preparation. with some others. It's concerning vegetables. Drake resembles that of man, the shape of a man,

that they naturally grow under gallows and places of execution. Does it really say it gives a shriek upon I try to get out of the shadow for you guys, anybody trying to decipher at home? It's fatal or dangerous to dig them up? It's all about Man-Rex. The cinnamon, which I know is,

I think is a pretty significant root in alchemy, I think. Or at least maybe early potions. Cinnamon, ginger, cloves, make parts or fruits of the same tree. That mistletoe is bred upon trees from seeds which birds let fall thereon. of the role of Iirico Every year upon the Christmas Eve, upon Christmas Eve

Sephora, Cavalow, the power to break or loosen iron. Okay, I'm gonna put this aside and we're gonna get into the rest of the book. Here, let me get something to, what do you know what we got here? I'm gonna receive tenets concerning animals. Fourth, popular and received tenets concerning man. concerning man, humans.

Man and woman, the fifth book of many things questionable as they aren't described in pictures. That picture of Adam and Eve with Navels, the fact of being born, and if they were created not born of other humans, they shouldn't have, shouldn't have had an umbilical cord.

The sixth book concerning, sundry tenants geographical and historical. Seventh book concerning many historical tenants generally received. Three of was erected against a second deluge. Interesting. Super tall building, maybe on top of a mountain. Shelter them from another flood. That's a really interesting one.

The army of Xerxes drank whole. rivers dry that Hannibal ate through the Alps with vinegar on the death of Escalis of the cities of Tarsus and in Kili built in the great ship Syracusia or Alexandria yeah this whole book it was over a hundred dollars for me right around $100 but I glad that they showed pictures of this table of contents because it was what wanted me to bidding more in the last 30 seconds or so. So many interesting, I mean, things I'm interested in, let alone what, uh, top of what, you know, hearing what this

neurophysic has to say about it. Horses have no gall. That pigeons have no gall. I'm not sure what that means. Look that up or ask one of you guys. On her bites off is tell. or stone, border than the other, that a bear brings forth her cubs. Not like a cryptid?

I wonder, is the basilisk? I'd have to look that one up. And the wolf first seeing a man begets a, by the bill, maybe J.K. Rowling on this book, who lives in the amphibians or serpents with two heads, moving either way. Vipers' force, opposites, or their, uh, this is just, this is still, pretty fascinating even nowadays it's really cool there's so many let's just uh maybe we'll go ahead and pick one from each book because i know anybody who knows me knows i could i can sit here and ramble necessarily making sense so uh the yeses the f's and s's kind of throw me off i appreciate you guys

watching because I would not have a reason to buy these books or spend this much money on books like this if you guys didn't watch so I'd be just sitting here without a camera book and I'm going to pay for it so at least I'm just also super uh super glad enough of you guys are interested in old books like me I guess yeah you can could see it That's just so cool. That wiggly line. Just so obviously. Look at chapter 6. The obstinate adherence to antiquity. It looks like chapter 1 was a lot to do with the fall of man in the Bible in Genesis about getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden, deceived by Satan. Which is interesting, his take on it. I guess he's trying to Well, I don't know exactly.

Let's look just happy I can thumb through the pages of this book much more easily than my astronomy book. Because I still want to go back and look at that book, but it's really, really brittle. These pages are much more. Chapter 7. Another rabbilibus, or atyonebus. Written long after by Antignais. another also of the same title by plegan traillianus translated by

by zylander all where of make good of the promise of their titles and may be read with caution which if any man shall which if any man shall likewise observe in the lecture of philostratus

concerning the life of Apollonius were not only written in ancient writers but shall carry a wary eye on Paul Venetius, Jovius, Olaus Magnus, Nurembergius, and many others I think his circumspection is laudable and he may there

thereby decline occasion of error. Wow, I don't even know what that said. I thought this was Jeff. I feel like I'm Is this matching up an appearance to antiquity? Chapter 6. I'm looking for chapters.

Intiquity of adherence unto antiquity. But the more mortalist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution upon truth, hath been a preemptory adhesion. That F gets me every time unto authority. And more especially, the estate. of our belief upon the dictates of antiquities. For as every capacity may observe, most men of ages present so superstitiously, most men of ages present, so superstitiously look on ages past.

I've got to be careful that I'm not doing that right now, that the authorities of the one exceed the reason of the other, whose persons indeed being far removed from our times, their works which seldom with us pass uncontrolled, either by contemporaries or immediate successors, so unedited, I guess, we rarely see their work unedited, are now become out of the distance of envies, and the further removed from the people,

present times are conceived to approach the nearer unto truth itself. Now hereby methinks we man-manifestly delude ourselves, and widely walk out of the track of truth. For first, for first, men hereby impose a which the ingenuity of no age should endure, or indeed the presumption of any, did ever yet enjoin. Thus Hippocrates about

2,000 years ago conceived into conceived in no injustice either to examine or refute the doctrines of his predecessors. Galen, the like, and Aristotle most of any,

yet did not any of these conceive themselves infallible or set down their district dictates as verities, irrefragable, irrefutable truths, I guess. But when they either deliver their own inventions or rejected other men's opinions, they proceeded with judgment and ingenuity,

establishing their assertion not only with great solidarity, solidity, but submitting them also unto the correction of future discovery. That's humility right there. The seeds of science, scientific method. Secondly, men that adore times past, consider not that those times were once present. That is, as our own are at this instant, and we ourselves unto those to come as they unto us.

us at present, as we rely on them, even so will those on us and magnific us hereafter, or magnify us hereafter, who at present condemn ourselves, which very absurdity is daily committed amongst us even in the esteem and censure of our own times. And to speak impartially, old men from whom we should expect the great example of wisdom do most exceed in this point of folly. Commending the days of their youth, they scarce remember at least well understood not. Extoling those times their younger years have heard, their fathers condemn. and condemning those times the gray heads of their posterity shall command.

And thus is it the humor of many heads to extol the days of their forefathers and declaim against the wickedness of times present. Isn't that a perennial truth? Which, notwithstanding, they cannot handsomely do. without the borrowed help and saders of times past, condemning the vices of their times, by the expressions of vices and times which they command, which cannot but argue the community of vice in both. So he says,

Horace, therefore, juvenile and Perseus were no prophets, although their lives did seem to indicate indicate a point at our times. There is a certain lift of vices committed in all ages and to claim against by all authors, which or a certain list of vices, committed in all ages into claimed against by all authors, which will last as long as humane or human nature,

or digested in the commonplaces may serve for any theme and never be out of date until doomsday. Thirdly, the testimonies of antiquity and such as pass iraculously amongst us by word of mouth through orally. not if we consider them always so exact exact as to examine the doctrine they delivered for some and for those the acutest of them have left unto us to many things of falsity controllable not only by critical and collective reason but common and contrary observation Here are examples in Aristotle. Through all his books of animals, we shall instance, instance only in three of his problems, and all contained under one section. The first inquireth, why a man doth cough,

but not an ox or a cow. Whereas notwithstanding, the contrary is often observed by husbandmen. maybe that's like animal husbandry it's like a farmer or a cattleman cowboy a rancher and stands confirmed by those who have expressly treated de rea rustica and have also delivered remedies for it so why jumans as so why jumans are rumins as horses oxen and asses have no erectation or belching, no burping, whereas, indeed, the contrary is often observed

and also delivered by Comella, Columella. And thirdly, our solace homo, some Greek text, maybe you guys can read that, whereas it cannot escape the eyes. In the ordinary observations of all men that horses, dogs, and foxes wax gray with age in our countries, and in colder regions, many other animals without it. So there you go.

He lists a bunch of things, cows coughing or burping, cows, horses, oxen, and asses, and then animals having gray hair. Aristotle seemed to think they didn't. Other authors write often, dubiously even in matters where in it's expected a strict and definitive truth extenuating their affirmation it was expected a strict and definitive truth extenuating their affirmations with something as diocesc Gaelin Aristotle and

many more others here say taking upon trial most they have delivered whose volumes are mere collections drawn from the mouths or leaves of other authors as may be observed in Pliny or alien athenius and many others not a few transcriptively subscribing their names unto other men's this guy's a bit verbose magnified Virgil hath borrowed almost all his works his echologues from the theocratist his Gorgix from Hesiod and Erratus, Eritus, his aneid from Homer, and horses. Marcellus Empiricus, who hath left a famous work de medicamentus, hath word for word transcribed all scrobonius Largis, de composition medicamentorum, and not left out his very peroration. Maybe that's opinion, I guess.

We so eagerly adhere to antiquity in the accounts of Elder Times, we are to consider the fabulous condition of, thereof, and then we should not deny if we call to mind the mendacity of Greece, the pride, I think, arrogance, from whom we've received most relations, and that a considerable part of ancient times was by the Greeks themselves termed, that is, a considerable part of ancient times,

was by the Greeks themselves termed made up or stuffed with fables, stuffed out with fables, and surely the fabulous inclination of those days was greater than any sense, which swarmed, so with fables, and from such slender grounds took hints for fictions ever after. How far they exceeded, may be exemplified from Pallephetus, in his book about fabulous, a book of fabulous narrations, that fable of Orpheus, who by the melody of his music

made woods and trees to follow him, was raised upon a slender. under foundation, for there were a crew of mad women retired onto a mountain, from whence being pacified by his music, they descended with bows in their hands, bows in their hands, which unto the fabulous, fabulosity of those times proved a sufficient ground to celebrate unto all posterity, the magic of Orpheus's harp. That's ridiculous. Trees about it.

That Medea, the famous sorceress, the famous sorceress, in a receipt to make white hair black and reduce old heads into the tincture of youth again. Hmm. That's fascinating. So, he's saying maybe she could just dye,

hair and that was how she tricked the fable of geryon and cerebus with three heads was this garian was of the city of tricharnia trichorinia that is of three heads tricorinia and syribis and seribis of the same place was one of his dogs to a cave upon pursuit of his master's oxen. Hercules perforce drew him out of that place from whence. The conceits of those days affirmed, no less, then that Hercules descended into hell, and wrought up Cerberus, Sebrus, into the habitation of the living.

Upon the like grounds was raised the figment of Briariari. who dwelling in a city called Hecatanachiria, the fancied of those times assigned him an hundred andes t'was ground enough to fancy the wings unto Daedalus, and that he stole out a window from Minos and sailed away with his son Icarus, who, steering his course wisely, escaped. but his son carrying too high a sail was drowned that Nyobie weeping over her children was turned into a stone was nothing else but that during her life she erected over their sepultures she erected over their sepulchers a marble tomb of her own when Action had undone himself with dogs and the prodigal tendons of hunting. They made a solemn story of how he was devoured by his hounds. And upon the grounds was raised the anthropophagic

of Diomedes, his horses. Upon his slender foundation was built the fable of the Minotaur. For one taurus, a servant of Minos, begat his mistress, Pacifay with child, from whence the infant was named Minotaurus. Now unto this fabulosity of those times was thought sufficient to accuse Palif,

Pasifae, of bestiality, or admitting conjunction with a bull, and in succeeding ages, gave a hint of depravity unto dominion. unto demission to act the fable into reality. Reminds me of a story of a show. I think I watched on the History Channel where they were trying to debunk the escape of Moses,

bringing the Jews out of Egypt and how he parted the Red Sea and saying that they mistranslated the Red Sea. It was a mistranslation of the Sea, of reeds, which was actually a bay instead of the actual sea, the deep sea. It was a bay that simply happened to where the tides coincided with Moses having to cross, kind of go, you know, go through it sort of, and the tide had allowed the waters to recede and just as the pharaoh and all his chariots came. The tide came.

back in all those ancient myths go through this and find a dozen or so really interesting especially interesting passages and uh we'll we'll read them next time and you guys let me know let me know if you like this book you have material here i might might end up just making a really long video just me reading the whole book or attempting to it. I still have a hard time getting past the Fs and S's. So much for giving you an excuse to buy these books. It's a 350-year-old book.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for supporting the channel. Thanks for showing love guys. I'll see you next time.