I’ll give an example: according to many bestiaries, weasels give birth through their ears. In the Middle Ages, as in ancient Rome, weasels were domesticated animals, much like cats in the countryside today. So there’s no chance that medieval people didn’t know how weasels gave birth… and yet they repeated this story without hesitation because reality (which they did know) was less important than the truth.
Except there are medieval writers who explicitly note that factoid as a common (and explicitly untrue) myth. Assuming reality is something that is easily verified and understood in an era long before our own period of rapid transfer of information is not a realistic position to take.
Fuck, I can name any number of incredibly bizarre and easily disproven misconceptions I have personally encountered in day-to-day life in the fucking information age, where textbooks abound, public education is mandatory, materialism is the norm, the voices of specialists are literal seconds away, and the total combined knowledge of humanity is literally at our fingertips. Yet people - even educated people sometimes - refuse to verify information, and pass it on anyway, because it suits their preconceptions about life.
How much worse is that, do you think, in a time when verification meant knowing, finding, and spending considerable time ensuring someone was credible? Across geographical barriers? Across language barriers? What about when it contradicts religious dogma, accepted cultural norms, or literary sources? What about when your own access to literary sources is restricted by the incredible expense and low volume of produced books?
Assuming reality is something that is easily verified and understood in an era long before our own period of rapid transfer of information is not a realistic position to take.
It is for something as evident as the fact that weasels don’t give birth by the ears. You don’t need Internet or materialism for that.
It is for something as evident as the fact that weasels don’t give birth by the ears. You don’t need Internet or materialism for that.
… do you know where weasels give birth, generally?
In their dens.
You know, places too small to fit a human head inside, even if you managed to lodge a burning candle in there to see.
Weasels weren’t generally kept as house pets. They weren’t being doted on and watched constantly. They weren’t kept in terrariums or confined in the house. Weasels, like cats, were largely left to their own devices even in a domesticated context, not obsessively observed by a class of people with significant leisure time to dedicate to weasel-fancying, carefully watching their pregnant weasel at all hours for the beautiful moment it gives birth. For that matter, many medieval bestiaries differentiate between ferrets (which are domesticated) and other varieties of weasel (which are not).
That appeal to ‘common sense’ also doesn’t explain why other medieval writers note that weasels giving birth from their ears is both false, and a widely-believed in myth, if something that ‘evident’ was simply known.
For that matter, another ‘evident’ myth, spontaneous generation, wasn’t disproven until the 17th century AD, and was still widely believed in up into the 19th century AD.
Except there are medieval writers who explicitly note that factoid as a common (and explicitly untrue) myth. Assuming reality is something that is easily verified and understood in an era long before our own period of rapid transfer of information is not a realistic position to take.
Fuck, I can name any number of incredibly bizarre and easily disproven misconceptions I have personally encountered in day-to-day life in the fucking information age, where textbooks abound, public education is mandatory, materialism is the norm, the voices of specialists are literal seconds away, and the total combined knowledge of humanity is literally at our fingertips. Yet people - even educated people sometimes - refuse to verify information, and pass it on anyway, because it suits their preconceptions about life.
How much worse is that, do you think, in a time when verification meant knowing, finding, and spending considerable time ensuring someone was credible? Across geographical barriers? Across language barriers? What about when it contradicts religious dogma, accepted cultural norms, or literary sources? What about when your own access to literary sources is restricted by the incredible expense and low volume of produced books?
It is for something as evident as the fact that weasels don’t give birth by the ears. You don’t need Internet or materialism for that.
… do you know where weasels give birth, generally?
In their dens.
You know, places too small to fit a human head inside, even if you managed to lodge a burning candle in there to see.
Weasels weren’t generally kept as house pets. They weren’t being doted on and watched constantly. They weren’t kept in terrariums or confined in the house. Weasels, like cats, were largely left to their own devices even in a domesticated context, not obsessively observed by a class of people with significant leisure time to dedicate to weasel-fancying, carefully watching their pregnant weasel at all hours for the beautiful moment it gives birth. For that matter, many medieval bestiaries differentiate between ferrets (which are domesticated) and other varieties of weasel (which are not).
That appeal to ‘common sense’ also doesn’t explain why other medieval writers note that weasels giving birth from their ears is both false, and a widely-believed in myth, if something that ‘evident’ was simply known.
For that matter, another ‘evident’ myth, spontaneous generation, wasn’t disproven until the 17th century AD, and was still widely believed in up into the 19th century AD.