Excerpt:
I remember when I was in college taking an intro to philosophy course, the professor told us that Aristotle said that swallows hibernate at the bottom of lakes in the mud and it was just taken as canonical knowledge for like 2000 years. I laughed thinking it was silly as hell, and while I forget the exact words of the exchange, another student, a guy in an expensive-ass North Face jacket (oddly, I remember that jacket but not the guy’s face) got upset and said something to the effect of “How would he have known? You think you’re smarter than Aristotle?!” I couldn’t help myself and said, “Yeah, now that I know he was a dipshit!” I explained that he could have tested this hypothesis sitting (or paying somebody to sit) at the edge of a lake for a season and counting the flocks that go underwater and fail to come back up. I said I’d be more understanding if he had said some real out-there shit that couldn’t be tested, like they went to the moon. Notice that the option of Aristotle saying, “Gee, I don’t know where swallows go in the winter! What an interesting conundrum!” never occurred to the gentleman in the expensive jacket. Or to Aristotle, apparently.
To read the rest of the essay, visit Incredulity, Incuriosity, and The Academy by nakam
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— Judith’s Dagger