I really think it's not smart to elevate this into an issue on which great matters of faith stand or fall. Best to just pretend it doesn't exist like the Geonim did basically. Clearly you see empirically that plenty of people can believe that Chazal erred in scientific matters and it doesn't cause them emunah-distress, so why try and push them into it?
Not all scientific errors are of the same quality. Those that require suspending basic independent and critical thinking are of a totally different sort.
I hear what you're saying, but it takes too much cognitive dissonance for me to on the one hand accept that they were completely overtaken by the irrational and superstitious mindset of their times in this area, and simultaneously believe that they were able to transmit a tradition from Sinai with complete integrity without it being subconsciously corrupted by cultural influence. Once you let this genie out of the bottle, then Chazal's view on women, morality, and spirituality are all subject to serious question if they are authentic Torah views or imported from their culture.
That's only an issue if you assume that every word they said was transmitted verbatim from Sinai, rather than something that developed over time using tools and principles transmitted from Sinai.
Don't understand. Doesn't the development approach (which I happen to subscribe to) make it MORE subject to outside influences and environment since there is more human input going on?
It's also the very reason why it says (in this week's Parsha) ועשית ככל אשר יורוך, to which Chazal (and Rashi) add - "even if they say that right is left and left is right", not because it's correct but because that's the process of Torah Sheba'al Peh.
I would also point out the existence of a Korban Chatas for the Community at large due to an error on the side of the Chachomim.
You mean to say the process of TSBP is to incorporate non-Jewish concepts of morality and spirituality? I find that very hard to believe. Doesn't the Torah have its own concepts of morality and spirituality?
Why are you saying “subconsciously corrupted by cultural influence”? Why can't you say the Torah's relationship to the times is to generally accept the derech eretz and the contemporary experts in non Torah matters after applying principles of chachmas Yisrael, maintaining their chachma as purely about olam hazeh with no influence on their connection to principles of emes? Chazal explicitly recognized that the Persians were more expert than them in derech eretz and followed that. What about cultural influence? When you have the strength of character and vision + authority of chazal, there's no fear of that. The Torah simply gave them no mandate to be doctors who would revolutionize medicine in their time. Your projecting backwards what you find irrational and superstitious is almost certainly 100% anachronistic.
In order to believe in Toras Hashem, you first have to know what authentic Judaism is and what it isn't. Who is going to tell us that if not Chazal because they were influenced by Greek, Roman and Babylonian concepts?
James Kugel is going to tell us what authentic Judaism is?
That's a good point, but it's also important in halacha l'maaseh how to give parameters for when we can assume Chazal would have been going with their "science", and what would change based on that. It seems that DYK's paramater is "never", but I think many even chareidi poskim would disagree...
Not killing lice on Shabbos and eating fish with worms is a perfect litmus test for mapping out these parameters. If a posek is machmir, ask him why. If he says because Chazal were following the science of their day about SG and we now know there is no SG, then he's making a huge hashkafic statement about cultural influences on Chazal in halacha.
For what it's worth here is my explanation of lice:
" Moreover, when one contemplates the reason the Gemara gives, it begs for further explanation. Why would the lack of procreation mean that it is not considered נטילת נשמה? The Gemara says this is derived from אילים. But why would “procreation” be the defining feature of אילים for the purpose of melacha, rather than being, say, a big shaggy creature with four legs and two eyes? I think the obvious pshat is that lack of procreation means the creature is not an independent lifeform, but part of a person’s sweat. And indeed, the Rishonim use the words “אלא נולד מן הזיעה”. This can be understood as a physical reality (and yes, the Amoraim probably truly believed this- even though there is a discussion within the sugya if it is really true), but at the same time it can also be understood as a halachic category, that the lice are considered part of a person’s sweat, and not an independent creature that שחיטה would apply to- and this is the category that matters, and would not *necessarily* change based on modern scientific revelations."
So you are threading the needle by saying Chazal got the metzius wrong by following the science of their times, but they were lucky enough to fit that mistake into a halachic category that could survive the correction today?
I wouldn't put it quite like that. It's not luck, but it's not surprising that halachic definitions would have a rough correspondence with the "science" of the times when those halachos were given. Mashal l'mah hadavar domeh, if you would ask a secular Hebrew speaker what the "מלאכות חשובות" are, nobody would come up with the 39 melachos. But it's not some lucky coincidence that most of them just happen to correspond to ancient processes of producing bread from scratch, producing clothing from scratch, rather than, say, manufacturing a circuit board. It's very understandable, even aside from the fact they were in the Mishkan. The Torah was given for all time but obviously is specially connected to the period in which it was given.
The Yerushalmi gives a different explanation that stands up. I think that most of these cases are solved by relying on the difference between mesorah (it's muttar) and explanation.
I am currently working on collecting every statment of chazal about the real world that is amiable to being tested or otherwise falsifiable.
I have well over 100 statements. The harsh reality is this: Almost every statment they made about the natural world was inaccurate. Period. End is sentence. Zoology, human anatomy, physics, astronomy, everything. They were wise and insightful and brilliant and very observant, but they know exactly as much as everyone else back then know, not more, not less.
They made thousands of statements about the natural world, and you collected 100 cherry-picked statements that you picked only because you think are incorrect, and conclude "Almost every statment they made about the natural world was inaccurate"? Based on your method, this seems like an entirely unwarranted conclusion.
No they did not. Open a misechta and start counting. I am talking about direct observations about the natural world (e.g., the gestation period of animal x is y days, the bottom of a pit x deep is dangerous because of hevel, pubic hair only grows on x population, rain comes from meteorological process y, etc.).
I am taking every statment. 9 out of 10 are plain wrong. The remainder are either partially wrong, or correct, but trivially so.
Sorry, you're just wrong. The vast majority of statements are correct. Open up a Bava Kama. שן – יש הנאה להזיקה, הא – אין הנאה להזיקה. Disagree with that? Next. רגל – הזיקה מצוי, הני – אין הזיקן מצוי. Disagree with that? קרן – דכוונתו להזיק. Disagree with that? שמא יקניטנו רבו, וילך וידליק גדישו של חבירו, ונמצא זה מחייב את רבו מאה מנה בכל יום! Disagree that this would happen? You're just cherry picking the ones that you think are wrong, and coming to the ridiculous conclusion that they didn't see what was going on in front of their noses.
It's hard to know where to start with this comment. You are quoting discussions that are discussing LEGAL distinctions between different types of damage. If something is not kavvanaso lihazik, then it is not Karen, is it is yash haanah lihezako, then it is shain, etc. Those aren't statements about reality. The point is to find all the places where you can pin an actual statement against the wall, and say let's test that, is it falsifiable, does it correlate with reality, etc.
It's hard to know where to start, because you have been so easily refuted. These statements are CLEARLY about reality. When the ox eats, it does so for pleasure. When it gores another ox, it's trying to hurt it. It's normal for the ox to trample things in the public domain. It's obvious that if you would make the master liable for the slave's deliberate damages, this would incentivize the slave's to damage deliberately. Reality, my friend, reality.
Mascil Binah: But kabbala happened, so, like, checkmate.
More seriously, I think your point would be strengthened if you didn't limit this to Talmudic remedies but anything from ancient wise people. It wouldn't make sense that, say, Aristotle accepted things that were observably false. Technically possible, but not a great answer.
I don't have the experience of other ancient wise people being so critical and analytical as Chazal. Maybe they were, but I haven't studied their works. Do they have anything dialectical that comes close to the Talmud's hashing and drilling down and thrust and parry?
You don't have much experience about anything outside the beis hamedrash. Period. If you had this experience, you wouldn't write half the outlandish things you do. What's even more bizairre is you refuse to accept other people out there do have more relevant experience. Your starting point is, as soon as they are in a way critical of anything in the BH, they don't know what they are talking about. And that's a problem.
Of course Aristotle did as did chazal. Look it up. Here are some.
Heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones
• Claim: If you drop a heavy rock and a light feather (ignoring air resistance), the rock will reach the ground first because it has more “gravity” (in his sense of natural tendency to fall).
• Reality: Galileo (and later Newton) showed that, in a vacuum, all objects fall at the same rate.
Men have more teeth than women
• Claim: Males have more teeth than females, stated without ever counting his wife’s teeth (or anyone else’s).
• Reality: Adults of both sexes generally have the same number—32, including wisdom teeth.
Both of those are wrong. Heavier objects do in fact observably fall faster than light objects, because without a vacuum you can't ignore air resistance. And his claim that men have more teeth than women is based on observation also.
Air resistance does not depend on the mass of an object. Two coins of exactly the same size and shape, will fall at the same rate, even if one has a mass hundred times greater.
Aristotle gives no evidence of having counted them. The claim probably arose from:
• Philosophical bias – He saw males as “more perfect” in nature and assumed this superiority extended to anatomy.
• Overgeneralizing from animals – In some animal species, males do have extra tusks, horns, or teeth (e.g., male boars have larger or more prominent tusks).
• Not checking his wife’s mouth – Personal examination was not considered necessary for such a “self-evident” claim.
Are you familiar with the Maharal's approach? He writes in many places that chazal were interested in the greater significance of things and were not that interested in the physical details and were often not speaking about them even when it seemed they were. I don't have time to look for sources but if you look at the divrei chazal that are controversial and check what the Maharal says about it, you'll eventually find one where he says this.
I missed the footnote when I published my post. R Avraham Ben Harambam being fake is one of the dumbest conspiracies of all time. (Yes, I've read TCS). R Meiselman doesn't like it so he has to make up it's fake. Very shvach.
(As someone who used to listen to R Meiselman shiurim on occasion, this is his one big shortcoming. Everyone has to agree with his svara. He will say a great one in a rishon which is really geshmak but then he has to twist everyone else into holding of his svara even if it results in a complete mutilation of their words.)
1) When Abbaya quotes his 'eim' with a bizarre remedy for something, is that chazal? Clearly it's his nurse maid, not chazal?
2) The Rambam is talking about droshos, not remedies.
3) Why do you assume Chazal are scientists?
4) How do you know the Avrohom ben HaRambam is 'faked'?
5) How do you deal with the Maharal who treats much of chazal's more bizaiire sayings as mesholim.
6) And who says everything Chzal said is to be canonised like Chazal. If Reish Lokish remarked to his wife "Shmuly didn't take out the garbage again and his room is a mess" - is that 'chazal'? Were it to be recorded in the talmud, would it merit years of debate - you know, what's worse, the garbage or the messy room - was Reish Lokish's order davka or lav davka? Why did Reish Lokish tell his wife at all, why didn't he deal with it himself? In another place Reis Lokish's son is called Shmuel - did he have two sons? That sort of typical talmudic/rishonic debate.
You are making a fundamental mistake. You are projecting the modern approach to science on people who lived 2000 years ago. To someone who is living in 2025 it’s inconceivable that you would offer a medical remedy without testing it. We know that science and medicine are evidence based and requires experimentation. It takes years for drugs to be approved because they do all kinds of clinical trials. But this is a MODERN invention. There was a scientific revolution about 500 years ago when the way people studied nature shifted from relying mainly on ancient authority, philosophy, and religion toward systematic observation, experimentation, and mathematical explanation.
Before the revolution:
• Knowledge often came from Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy, and Scripture.
• Scholars explained nature mostly through logic, philosophy, and commentary.
• Experimentation was rare, and natural philosophy was a branch of metaphysics.
So in this mindset which was the mindset of the ancient world including Chazal offering medical remedies without testing them was the norm.
Before reading your comment, I wrote out a comment saying the same basic idea like this:
There is a field called intellectual history, which considers how human ways of thinking, advancement of ideas and approach to various subjects developed over time. Just because something seems careless and criminally negligent today does not mean that thought even occurred to even the most brilliant of minds fifteen hundred years ago. In a word, your assumption is anachronistic.
Two examples: there's a reason no one wrote sefarim on the 613 mitzvos before the couple of centuries when Behag, then R’ Saadya, then Rambam, then Semag made it the big ”thing.” That just wasn't how the chachamim thought of the mitzvos or how people were interested in learning about them. But it's so obvious! If there are 613 mitzvos in the Torah, tell me what they are! What, I'm supposed to just figure them out from shas myself???
By now, though, this trend passed and we expect precise halachos organized according to what has become our traditional way and few of us pay much attention to lists of the 613.
Another example, which might get me in trouble (don't tell anyone): Many today criticize the founding fathers of the US for denying the same freedoms to Blacks as was honored for Whites. This is absurd. The concept of US-type freedom in the mid 18th century simply did not exist. No one dreamed of any alternative to kings owning the land and everyone being their subjects. With the birth of the US, a whole new, crazy concept was introduced and there can be no expectations of how they should have thought to apply it at that time. It makes perfect sense that it would have seemed extremely crazy to extend an already crazy idea even to people who seemed to be of a substantially lower class and not civilized enough to appreciate and employ their rights in higher society. Equality obviously didn't mean that - until it did. Now people look back and call them racist, losing respect for the inventors of the central foundation of the modern world.
Bottom line, it's entirely possible, and even likely, that chazal had a view of medicine that involved completely different sensibilities and assumptions than ours do. Any study of philosophy of science in this regard will be full of examples of exactly this.
I was thinking about some of the same examples that you cited as well. The same goes for a Sefer like the Mishna Torah. No one today would ever write a Sefer without citing sources. Seforim written today have adopted the practice of footnotes another modern invention. The list is endless.
This is a reply to everyone--Marty, d g, Ben Torah:
I point out how Chazal are very capable of analyzing the various factors that may go into the effectiveness of a remedy in that earlier post about holistic animal cures. It demonstrates sophisticated, critical thinking regarding the efficacy of cures used in their culture. To think they would suspend all this thinking when it came to recommending possibly dangerous cures to their fellow Jews is simply not plausible.
Like I asked Marty, let's stick to cures for now. The Maharal wasn't talking about medical cures which is presumably all about the concrete, physical world
You completely ignored the arguments presented. They were working based on a different set of “scientific” principles. These principles colored their scientific thinking. Evidence based medicine did NOT exist in the ancient world. You are looking at chazal through the lenses of modern scientific thinking which is simply not applicable. Your can’t believe comes from the modern scientific mindset which didn’t exist then.
I ignored them because I demonstrated in the previous post about animal cures that Chazal were indeed capable of breaking out of this so-called set of "scientific" principles. They carefully analyzed the metzius regarding the cure for constant tearing. They calculated all kinds of possibly relevant factors. They approached it with exact same kind of modern scientific mindset as we do today.
You are bring ridiculous. The scientific revolution happened about 500 years ago not 2000 years ago. Chazal were magically 1500 years ahead of their times in science? Absolutely not. They believed the science if the Greeks. Chazal were a product of their times. The ancients valued observation when studying nature, but his idea of “observation” was often broad — watching animals in the wild, seeing how objects move, or noticing weather patterns — not necessarily hands-on verification for every claim.
• For everyday “obvious” facts, they frequently trusted traditional beliefs or logical reasoning rather than testing them themselves.
And that is why they could recommend remedies without testing them.
In the sugyoh of 'tearing' there is no mention of observation or analysis. Again, they could have just been repeating what each one found in the dusty manascripts in the National Library of Babylonia.
Firstly you are assuming they are capable of analysing factors. How do you know? If the chap died, they may have just assumed he died of the underlying disease. They had no way of knowing if the cat fetus killed him or the underlying disease killed him. If the chap recovered, they had no way of knowing if the cat fetus cured him, or he naturally recovered.
Secondly, you ignore everything they wrote. Even l'shitoseich that they were capable, they had no reason for any anylsis, the same reason as we don't analyse each and every time we take some medicine for heartburn.
Here's something cool: A cryptic pregnancy: Where women are pregnant with regular periods. That may have been more common in Chazal's era.
https://nypost.com/2025/08/15/lifestyle/i-had-no-idea-i-was-pregnant-until-i-gave-birth-on-the-toilet-2/
At the Jacobi ER, these were מעשים בכל יום
Oh God. I wrote a whole post bashing you and now you write this. I now need to edit stuff. Oh well.
The best defense is a good offense.
I really think it's not smart to elevate this into an issue on which great matters of faith stand or fall. Best to just pretend it doesn't exist like the Geonim did basically. Clearly you see empirically that plenty of people can believe that Chazal erred in scientific matters and it doesn't cause them emunah-distress, so why try and push them into it?
Not all scientific errors are of the same quality. Those that require suspending basic independent and critical thinking are of a totally different sort.
I hear what you're saying, but it takes too much cognitive dissonance for me to on the one hand accept that they were completely overtaken by the irrational and superstitious mindset of their times in this area, and simultaneously believe that they were able to transmit a tradition from Sinai with complete integrity without it being subconsciously corrupted by cultural influence. Once you let this genie out of the bottle, then Chazal's view on women, morality, and spirituality are all subject to serious question if they are authentic Torah views or imported from their culture.
That's only an issue if you assume that every word they said was transmitted verbatim from Sinai, rather than something that developed over time using tools and principles transmitted from Sinai.
Don't understand. Doesn't the development approach (which I happen to subscribe to) make it MORE subject to outside influences and environment since there is more human input going on?
100%. And that's part of the process.
It's also the very reason why it says (in this week's Parsha) ועשית ככל אשר יורוך, to which Chazal (and Rashi) add - "even if they say that right is left and left is right", not because it's correct but because that's the process of Torah Sheba'al Peh.
I would also point out the existence of a Korban Chatas for the Community at large due to an error on the side of the Chachomim.
You mean to say the process of TSBP is to incorporate non-Jewish concepts of morality and spirituality? I find that very hard to believe. Doesn't the Torah have its own concepts of morality and spirituality?
A. Chochma Bagoyim Ta'amin, there are things that have been incorporated into Jewish Culture/Customs that source from non-Jewish sources.
B. We do trust Chazal's judgment on all matters. But, when it comes to science-based Halacha, they were relying on the science of their time.
Why are you saying “subconsciously corrupted by cultural influence”? Why can't you say the Torah's relationship to the times is to generally accept the derech eretz and the contemporary experts in non Torah matters after applying principles of chachmas Yisrael, maintaining their chachma as purely about olam hazeh with no influence on their connection to principles of emes? Chazal explicitly recognized that the Persians were more expert than them in derech eretz and followed that. What about cultural influence? When you have the strength of character and vision + authority of chazal, there's no fear of that. The Torah simply gave them no mandate to be doctors who would revolutionize medicine in their time. Your projecting backwards what you find irrational and superstitious is almost certainly 100% anachronistic.
And? Let's question women's rights and morality. If we strongly believe in Toras Hashem we need not be frightened.
In order to believe in Toras Hashem, you first have to know what authentic Judaism is and what it isn't. Who is going to tell us that if not Chazal because they were influenced by Greek, Roman and Babylonian concepts?
James Kugel is going to tell us what authentic Judaism is?
I'm not sure there's one pure "authentic Judaism" at all. It is flexible which Hashem wanted as times and people change
I was really hoping you wouldn't say that. So you're into "continuous revelation"? How do you understand the 9th ikkar of the Ani Maamins?
I have a post on it.
No I do not believe in continuing revelation. But I do believe Torah lav bashamayin he.
You believe it is static?!
There is no integrity in the tradition from Sinai. That's why we have machlokas in droshos.
That's a good point, but it's also important in halacha l'maaseh how to give parameters for when we can assume Chazal would have been going with their "science", and what would change based on that. It seems that DYK's paramater is "never", but I think many even chareidi poskim would disagree...
Not killing lice on Shabbos and eating fish with worms is a perfect litmus test for mapping out these parameters. If a posek is machmir, ask him why. If he says because Chazal were following the science of their day about SG and we now know there is no SG, then he's making a huge hashkafic statement about cultural influences on Chazal in halacha.
For what it's worth here is my explanation of lice:
" Moreover, when one contemplates the reason the Gemara gives, it begs for further explanation. Why would the lack of procreation mean that it is not considered נטילת נשמה? The Gemara says this is derived from אילים. But why would “procreation” be the defining feature of אילים for the purpose of melacha, rather than being, say, a big shaggy creature with four legs and two eyes? I think the obvious pshat is that lack of procreation means the creature is not an independent lifeform, but part of a person’s sweat. And indeed, the Rishonim use the words “אלא נולד מן הזיעה”. This can be understood as a physical reality (and yes, the Amoraim probably truly believed this- even though there is a discussion within the sugya if it is really true), but at the same time it can also be understood as a halachic category, that the lice are considered part of a person’s sweat, and not an independent creature that שחיטה would apply to- and this is the category that matters, and would not *necessarily* change based on modern scientific revelations."
So you are threading the needle by saying Chazal got the metzius wrong by following the science of their times, but they were lucky enough to fit that mistake into a halachic category that could survive the correction today?
I wouldn't put it quite like that. It's not luck, but it's not surprising that halachic definitions would have a rough correspondence with the "science" of the times when those halachos were given. Mashal l'mah hadavar domeh, if you would ask a secular Hebrew speaker what the "מלאכות חשובות" are, nobody would come up with the 39 melachos. But it's not some lucky coincidence that most of them just happen to correspond to ancient processes of producing bread from scratch, producing clothing from scratch, rather than, say, manufacturing a circuit board. It's very understandable, even aside from the fact they were in the Mishkan. The Torah was given for all time but obviously is specially connected to the period in which it was given.
The Yerushalmi gives a different explanation that stands up. I think that most of these cases are solved by relying on the difference between mesorah (it's muttar) and explanation.
Of course they disagree. Know any chareidi poskim that say a ben-shemona chadoshim is muktza?
Who says that we accord the views of Chazal on science the same as we do as to matters of Halacha and Emunah?
I am currently working on collecting every statment of chazal about the real world that is amiable to being tested or otherwise falsifiable.
I have well over 100 statements. The harsh reality is this: Almost every statment they made about the natural world was inaccurate. Period. End is sentence. Zoology, human anatomy, physics, astronomy, everything. They were wise and insightful and brilliant and very observant, but they know exactly as much as everyone else back then know, not more, not less.
(I started compiling a list years ago, but an very much expanding it with sources, etc. https://malimaalah.wixsite.com/offthederechthoughts/post/180-reasons-to-question-the-truth-of-judaism )
They made thousands of statements about the natural world, and you collected 100 cherry-picked statements that you picked only because you think are incorrect, and conclude "Almost every statment they made about the natural world was inaccurate"? Based on your method, this seems like an entirely unwarranted conclusion.
No they did not. Open a misechta and start counting. I am talking about direct observations about the natural world (e.g., the gestation period of animal x is y days, the bottom of a pit x deep is dangerous because of hevel, pubic hair only grows on x population, rain comes from meteorological process y, etc.).
I am taking every statment. 9 out of 10 are plain wrong. The remainder are either partially wrong, or correct, but trivially so.
Sorry, you're just wrong. The vast majority of statements are correct. Open up a Bava Kama. שן – יש הנאה להזיקה, הא – אין הנאה להזיקה. Disagree with that? Next. רגל – הזיקה מצוי, הני – אין הזיקן מצוי. Disagree with that? קרן – דכוונתו להזיק. Disagree with that? שמא יקניטנו רבו, וילך וידליק גדישו של חבירו, ונמצא זה מחייב את רבו מאה מנה בכל יום! Disagree that this would happen? You're just cherry picking the ones that you think are wrong, and coming to the ridiculous conclusion that they didn't see what was going on in front of their noses.
It's hard to know where to start with this comment. You are quoting discussions that are discussing LEGAL distinctions between different types of damage. If something is not kavvanaso lihazik, then it is not Karen, is it is yash haanah lihezako, then it is shain, etc. Those aren't statements about reality. The point is to find all the places where you can pin an actual statement against the wall, and say let's test that, is it falsifiable, does it correlate with reality, etc.
It's hard to know where to start, because you have been so easily refuted. These statements are CLEARLY about reality. When the ox eats, it does so for pleasure. When it gores another ox, it's trying to hurt it. It's normal for the ox to trample things in the public domain. It's obvious that if you would make the master liable for the slave's deliberate damages, this would incentivize the slave's to damage deliberately. Reality, my friend, reality.
To be fair, those sugyos do say strange things about the intentions of snakes....
Mascil Binah: But kabbala happened, so, like, checkmate.
More seriously, I think your point would be strengthened if you didn't limit this to Talmudic remedies but anything from ancient wise people. It wouldn't make sense that, say, Aristotle accepted things that were observably false. Technically possible, but not a great answer.
I don't have the experience of other ancient wise people being so critical and analytical as Chazal. Maybe they were, but I haven't studied their works. Do they have anything dialectical that comes close to the Talmud's hashing and drilling down and thrust and parry?
Yes
You don't have much experience about anything outside the beis hamedrash. Period. If you had this experience, you wouldn't write half the outlandish things you do. What's even more bizairre is you refuse to accept other people out there do have more relevant experience. Your starting point is, as soon as they are in a way critical of anything in the BH, they don't know what they are talking about. And that's a problem.
Of course Aristotle did as did chazal. Look it up. Here are some.
Heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones
• Claim: If you drop a heavy rock and a light feather (ignoring air resistance), the rock will reach the ground first because it has more “gravity” (in his sense of natural tendency to fall).
• Reality: Galileo (and later Newton) showed that, in a vacuum, all objects fall at the same rate.
Men have more teeth than women
• Claim: Males have more teeth than females, stated without ever counting his wife’s teeth (or anyone else’s).
• Reality: Adults of both sexes generally have the same number—32, including wisdom teeth.
There are a lot more.
Both of those are wrong. Heavier objects do in fact observably fall faster than light objects, because without a vacuum you can't ignore air resistance. And his claim that men have more teeth than women is based on observation also.
Air resistance does not depend on the mass of an object. Two coins of exactly the same size and shape, will fall at the same rate, even if one has a mass hundred times greater.
Thank you, Einstein
Newton, actually.
Really? Men have more teeth than women?
Aristotle gives no evidence of having counted them. The claim probably arose from:
• Philosophical bias – He saw males as “more perfect” in nature and assumed this superiority extended to anatomy.
• Overgeneralizing from animals – In some animal species, males do have extra tusks, horns, or teeth (e.g., male boars have larger or more prominent tusks).
• Not checking his wife’s mouth – Personal examination was not considered necessary for such a “self-evident” claim.
Yes, he says it's based on observation. Did you ever look up the source? Of course not. Instead you rely on AI slop.
I remember this shtoch from the slifkin days
Exact source?
Do men and women have different amounts of teeth in 2025? If not why do you think in the past they did?
Are you familiar with the Maharal's approach? He writes in many places that chazal were interested in the greater significance of things and were not that interested in the physical details and were often not speaking about them even when it seemed they were. I don't have time to look for sources but if you look at the divrei chazal that are controversial and check what the Maharal says about it, you'll eventually find one where he says this.
I missed the footnote when I published my post. R Avraham Ben Harambam being fake is one of the dumbest conspiracies of all time. (Yes, I've read TCS). R Meiselman doesn't like it so he has to make up it's fake. Very shvach.
(As someone who used to listen to R Meiselman shiurim on occasion, this is his one big shortcoming. Everyone has to agree with his svara. He will say a great one in a rishon which is really geshmak but then he has to twist everyone else into holding of his svara even if it results in a complete mutilation of their words.)
1) When Abbaya quotes his 'eim' with a bizarre remedy for something, is that chazal? Clearly it's his nurse maid, not chazal?
2) The Rambam is talking about droshos, not remedies.
3) Why do you assume Chazal are scientists?
4) How do you know the Avrohom ben HaRambam is 'faked'?
5) How do you deal with the Maharal who treats much of chazal's more bizaiire sayings as mesholim.
6) And who says everything Chzal said is to be canonised like Chazal. If Reish Lokish remarked to his wife "Shmuly didn't take out the garbage again and his room is a mess" - is that 'chazal'? Were it to be recorded in the talmud, would it merit years of debate - you know, what's worse, the garbage or the messy room - was Reish Lokish's order davka or lav davka? Why did Reish Lokish tell his wife at all, why didn't he deal with it himself? In another place Reis Lokish's son is called Shmuel - did he have two sons? That sort of typical talmudic/rishonic debate.
You are making a fundamental mistake. You are projecting the modern approach to science on people who lived 2000 years ago. To someone who is living in 2025 it’s inconceivable that you would offer a medical remedy without testing it. We know that science and medicine are evidence based and requires experimentation. It takes years for drugs to be approved because they do all kinds of clinical trials. But this is a MODERN invention. There was a scientific revolution about 500 years ago when the way people studied nature shifted from relying mainly on ancient authority, philosophy, and religion toward systematic observation, experimentation, and mathematical explanation.
Before the revolution:
• Knowledge often came from Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy, and Scripture.
• Scholars explained nature mostly through logic, philosophy, and commentary.
• Experimentation was rare, and natural philosophy was a branch of metaphysics.
So in this mindset which was the mindset of the ancient world including Chazal offering medical remedies without testing them was the norm.
Before reading your comment, I wrote out a comment saying the same basic idea like this:
There is a field called intellectual history, which considers how human ways of thinking, advancement of ideas and approach to various subjects developed over time. Just because something seems careless and criminally negligent today does not mean that thought even occurred to even the most brilliant of minds fifteen hundred years ago. In a word, your assumption is anachronistic.
Two examples: there's a reason no one wrote sefarim on the 613 mitzvos before the couple of centuries when Behag, then R’ Saadya, then Rambam, then Semag made it the big ”thing.” That just wasn't how the chachamim thought of the mitzvos or how people were interested in learning about them. But it's so obvious! If there are 613 mitzvos in the Torah, tell me what they are! What, I'm supposed to just figure them out from shas myself???
By now, though, this trend passed and we expect precise halachos organized according to what has become our traditional way and few of us pay much attention to lists of the 613.
Another example, which might get me in trouble (don't tell anyone): Many today criticize the founding fathers of the US for denying the same freedoms to Blacks as was honored for Whites. This is absurd. The concept of US-type freedom in the mid 18th century simply did not exist. No one dreamed of any alternative to kings owning the land and everyone being their subjects. With the birth of the US, a whole new, crazy concept was introduced and there can be no expectations of how they should have thought to apply it at that time. It makes perfect sense that it would have seemed extremely crazy to extend an already crazy idea even to people who seemed to be of a substantially lower class and not civilized enough to appreciate and employ their rights in higher society. Equality obviously didn't mean that - until it did. Now people look back and call them racist, losing respect for the inventors of the central foundation of the modern world.
Bottom line, it's entirely possible, and even likely, that chazal had a view of medicine that involved completely different sensibilities and assumptions than ours do. Any study of philosophy of science in this regard will be full of examples of exactly this.
I was thinking about some of the same examples that you cited as well. The same goes for a Sefer like the Mishna Torah. No one today would ever write a Sefer without citing sources. Seforim written today have adopted the practice of footnotes another modern invention. The list is endless.
This is a reply to everyone--Marty, d g, Ben Torah:
I point out how Chazal are very capable of analyzing the various factors that may go into the effectiveness of a remedy in that earlier post about holistic animal cures. It demonstrates sophisticated, critical thinking regarding the efficacy of cures used in their culture. To think they would suspend all this thinking when it came to recommending possibly dangerous cures to their fellow Jews is simply not plausible.
Like I asked Marty, let's stick to cures for now. The Maharal wasn't talking about medical cures which is presumably all about the concrete, physical world
You completely ignored the arguments presented. They were working based on a different set of “scientific” principles. These principles colored their scientific thinking. Evidence based medicine did NOT exist in the ancient world. You are looking at chazal through the lenses of modern scientific thinking which is simply not applicable. Your can’t believe comes from the modern scientific mindset which didn’t exist then.
I ignored them because I demonstrated in the previous post about animal cures that Chazal were indeed capable of breaking out of this so-called set of "scientific" principles. They carefully analyzed the metzius regarding the cure for constant tearing. They calculated all kinds of possibly relevant factors. They approached it with exact same kind of modern scientific mindset as we do today.
And really now, how much of todays scientific mindset does it really take to figure out eating rotten fish is dangerous?
You are bring ridiculous. The scientific revolution happened about 500 years ago not 2000 years ago. Chazal were magically 1500 years ahead of their times in science? Absolutely not. They believed the science if the Greeks. Chazal were a product of their times. The ancients valued observation when studying nature, but his idea of “observation” was often broad — watching animals in the wild, seeing how objects move, or noticing weather patterns — not necessarily hands-on verification for every claim.
• For everyday “obvious” facts, they frequently trusted traditional beliefs or logical reasoning rather than testing them themselves.
And that is why they could recommend remedies without testing them.
In the sugyoh of 'tearing' there is no mention of observation or analysis. Again, they could have just been repeating what each one found in the dusty manascripts in the National Library of Babylonia.
Firstly you are assuming they are capable of analysing factors. How do you know? If the chap died, they may have just assumed he died of the underlying disease. They had no way of knowing if the cat fetus killed him or the underlying disease killed him. If the chap recovered, they had no way of knowing if the cat fetus cured him, or he naturally recovered.
Secondly, you ignore everything they wrote. Even l'shitoseich that they were capable, they had no reason for any anylsis, the same reason as we don't analyse each and every time we take some medicine for heartburn.