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(422) Medieval Science and Sorcery - YouTube

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(00:00) also in the Middle Ages about what we've called here medieval science and sorcery and essentially the idea of before these kind of things diverged right so before there is a difference between alchemy and chemistry before there's a difference between astronomy and astrology I'll need the clicker to work again okay oh there it is okay that worked yeah exactly someone has cursed my my clicker okay so we'll look at medicine before modern medicine tonight and we're gonna look at astrology and astronomy before they diverge alchemy and chemistry

(00:52) before they diverged and we're going to look a little bit at the classical Greek philosophical system that is essentially underlying and unifying all of these different disciplines so let's see okay this is the under the this clicker is not working so maybe using your battery you could do who doesn't have a little piece of paper and okay so how many of you don't know oops that's it you got okay good thank you how many of you don't know your star or actually what it's actually technically your son Stein son zodiac sign does

(01:48) anybody not know if there are Pisces or a Capricorn so you all know that so this is something that's still with us enough that you at least you know we may know I mean I know I'm in areas I was born on April 2nd and I just have known I don't know what however long since I was a little kid but that's what it is however other parts of medieval science medieval medicine and the theories and that kind of thing are less well known and so one of them that you maybe don't know is what is your humor you know do you have

(02:18) a well-balanced humor or your humors out of alignment and what is that your most what's your dominant humor and so we're gonna do a little test and you can write down you know for each one and then we'll tally it up and you can we can figure it this question out okay there's a lot of quiz okay yeah it's not moving for Quebec so it won't it won't advance just one okay okay first what are your interests this is these are these are multiple-choice and so therefore it has to be what best describes you so a I'm an educated person but I don't

(03:11) really have many particular interests B I have many interests but I like to focus on one at a time so I can really develop deep expertise in each one C I'm most interested in people and relationships D I have a wide range of interests but I never picked just one I prefer to experience something new so essentially jack of all trades master of none you'll have to advance it you just write down a B C or D okay second question number two what is your relationship with money a I like to save my money and never waste it B I'm good at money

(03:58) management but I don't mind spending a lot on something that has real value C I like to buy things for the people I love D I spend all my money I like special experiences and nice things okay question three how spontaneous are you a not at all spontaneous I am a careful planner B while I'm not a spontaneous person per se I can make fast decisions when I have to see it depends on my mood also I changed my mind frequently d I'm very spontaneous I like doing things on the spur of the moment how energetic are you

(04:47) this quiz is taking more energy than I have be I have a lot of stamina I like a marathon runner rather than a sprinter see it really depends on my mood each day D I am super energetic how emotional are you I'm not emotional B I always remain calm on the outside even when I'm upset I can solve problems without showing my feelings C I'm very sensitive to the feelings of others and in touch with my own emotions D I have strong feelings but I can't always tell what other people are feeling are you easily bored I'm never

(05:32) bored hey I could be alone light and live like a hermit no B no I'm not dependent on circumstances or others I'm always doing something interesting C not so much as I tend to get attached to the people I'm with and the places I am and D yes this quiz is boring make it stop okay so let's score this one and essentially what it is is it's just it's just if you get mostly a's mostly B's mostly C's you're mostly DS right and so if you don't have any one particular one that stand out and you're all over the place then you have a well-balanced here

(06:10) can be well balanced humor but if you like mostly get all let's say A's here then that means you are melancholic so melancholia and so according to ancient and medieval medicine that means your analytical detail-oriented your a deep thinker a deep feeler you hate to be singled out in the crowd and you often strive for perfection this is caused little did you know by an excess of black bile in your system black bile being generated from your spleen how are we going to treat this if we give you a strong laxative that will purge the

(06:47) black bile out of your system so help to give a store the your natural balance of your humors the question is is there really such a thing as black bile and the answer is no oh so the problem right the two biles are in fact not not not in a modern medical science are they differentiated so the idea of it is in terms of observational II when the ancient Greeks when when hip-hip occurred even would Galen what they would do is they would take like a blood sample and the different part as they would separate different parts of it out with the white

(07:28) you know kind of blood cells or whatever are is like the yellow bile the at the coagulant and stuff like that I think it's the black bile the red is the blood you know and so and the liquid is the we'll get to whatever to think what they all the sections are but anyway in other words it's observation based on well for example when they remove different bodily liquids as opposed to anyway anything that we now understand in modern medicine so this is ancient and medieval medicine so this is the treatment B if you got all bunch of bees

(08:04) you're a choleric which means and this is what some melon choleric you know melancholy is a word we still use choleric is the one that we don't so much use except for maybe if the word you know the disease cholera right but essentially it means that you're extroverted independent decisive goal-oriented practical you can also be a patient of people who are less logical than you it's a nice way of saying for the personality here this is this is apparently little did you know a caused by an excess of yellow bile in your

(08:39) system which is produced by your gallbladder according to Galen so the treatment here is an emetic will induce you to vomit up the yellow yellow bile and to purge the yellow bile from your system so that your natural humors can be restored in their balance if you got a bunch of C's your phlegmatic phlegm that was the other part of us in trying to get to you so phlegmatic person that means you're relaxed easy-going you can even be apathetic but you're self reliant you don't show your emotions you're good at generalizing and making compromises this

(09:17) is caused by an excess of phlegm in your system leaving you cold because the climb is cold so what we need to do is to administer for example hot cups to your skin or maybe even hot irons in order to heat up your humors in general that's one possible treatment these are the also the strongest treatments so you can have for any of these things okay and if you got mostly DS that means you're sanguine and sanguine is one word that we do still use to has a way to talk about emotion it means you're talkative enthusiastic active social

(09:50) you're more extroverted outgoing you're willing to take risks you can also be too impulsive loud and lack empathy for others and so this is caused by an excess of blood in your system so what's our treatment we're gonna get out the leeches folks so all of you all of you sang when people you know we got to get that extra of blood out of you so anyway so essentially you probably then have that much awareness of ancient and medieval and early modern medicine you've seen maybe movies where they take out the leeches or were thinking about

(10:18) the leeches and maybe some of these other things but certainly the these were among all of the let's say strongest treatments that medieval and early modern I will just say ancient and medieval physicians had at their disposal I thought actually that this was completely lost and the people would probably be totally aware of all this how many people have kind of even heard about this medical system so actually a lot of you have and so I realized when I went around looking on the internet for clipart and things like that that

(10:53) there's actually some pretty substantial modern clipart about this because it can apparently like all things you know any any kind of ancient or medieval system you know has made a popular revivals and things like that and so it has made a certain comeback as a kind of now pseudo medicine or alternative medicine in this case okay so the system the four humors as we've kind of talked about this so what does this thing come from we've had some fun I wit the quiz though and it was an easy quiz so next time we have a pop quiz though don't

(11:26) don't don't get complacent it might be really tough next time so you know with these kind of extreme remedies that the physicians had at their disposal things like bloodletting hot cupping and medics laxatives but the system of humors or humoralism was actually a very serious discipline and held kind of amazing sway over western medicine from Hippocrates in the fifth century in fourth century and he's the guy for whom the Hippocratic oath his name is named you know so onward through in the Christian and Muslim Middle Ages and into the 17th

(12:04) century and actually beyond it's in the 17th century that the origins of kind of modern medicine start to disprove a lot of these theories and ultimately though it's not even until the middle of the 19th century that that it kind of definitively shown that for example there's not such thing as yellow and black bile so even the sense of these humors are but are still people are still following in this kind of tradition until anyway quite recently so less extreme remedies than these ones that we've kind of talked about a period

(12:36) here involved things like herbs changes in diet rest and alike or we'll describe seeing somebody doing bleeding in a Paris Hospital and this would have been in the 1930s okay believing in the 1930s yeah so I wouldn't I mean we shouldn't imagine that there's probably gone all the way along enough till when the revivals here have been able to almost touch you know so this is unlike some of the practices for example when we've talked about let's say the the lingering paganism to them we get to neo-pagan revivals there's two biggest stretch in

(13:15) between where there's no continuity in this case there may well have been you know overlap between people who were just inheriting it and then a revival of the practices so okay so what's the basis where does this all come from so we want to look at how this works so when we have done lectures in the past for example on the pre-socratic philosophers so the beginning of Western philosophy Greek philosophy one of the pre-socratics is a guy named empedocles who is often sicily and so often these before you get to

(13:51) socrates and his successors where philosophy starts to be focused really on Athens at the beginning of this thought it's around all of the margins of the frontiers of the of the Greek world and in petty cleans is often on the island of Sicily he's in the fifth century and we don't know exactly when and he's credited with formulating this theory that all matter is made up of these four classical elements plus plus the fifth elements essentially the four four main earthly elements or sublunar elements in different proportions so this basic

(14:26) cosmology that we don't have too much of in pedigree his own work so we can't say exactly what he was doing but it's later picked up by Aristotle and vastly systematized and spread and and anyway becomes very widespread that ever thereafter and so essentially we have here not what we think of in modern sense as what elements are so now of course we have atomic theory and modern atomic theory and also this understanding of you know what protons neutrons etc and different types of substances as being elements because of their atomic weight and that

(15:05) kind of thing instead here what the observations that these are based on by the in the earliest ancient Greek philosophers here are essentially what we would now think of is like phases of matter so they're aware of gas they're aware of liquid they're aware of solid they're aware of sort of energetic reactions like fire and so they've essentially as understood then that those are what everything is composed of it's composed of liquid solid gas and and you know this is essentially energy and so in so doing them the idea here is

(15:44) that everything is composed though of air earth fire at water in different proportions and that those then each have and qualities that is attached to them so air and fire share the fact that they are not by nature hot fire and earth by their nature are dry water and earth or by the nature cold in here and water are by the nature of wet is that our understanding there is also there are also South Asian and East Asian versions of this yeah and so the but in that case like you say the East Asian one there's five but it's a different five than this

(16:26) right we have Mike Carp awakes yes the second symphony of Carl Nielsen is nicknamed four temperaments with each one of the four movements inspired by one of the four humors okay yeah and temperament is is also another name of those systems so yeah thank you yeah so so it has had continuing cultural ongoing cultural echoes and again like Elizabeth was saying ongoing practice and then even revival now but there were also plays for example in the Renaissance that were written that were just to describe people with the

(17:01) different he essentially because these are their psychological backgrounds and so because they also supposedly people exhibited certain physiologies the character that is going to be very sanguine and so in other words this rash young shovel yeah or something like that who's running around and in never thinking being always leaping first will also maybe have ready cheeks because because that's a characteristic of being sanguine so Shaheen has to comment that this is gonna make a quick side comment with the sanguine personality so I know

(17:36) that recently in the past couple of decades they're discovered that there's a parasite that's transmitted from cats ooh and I think it's called Toxoplasma okay and it's usually it usually infects rats and mice on afraid of the cat and makes them attracted the cat you're in so and they thought it didn't affect humans but it does and it makes humans engage in were super risky behavior so oh it's a parasite that changes your personality oh okay so there is an actual parasite that gives you the effect of being sanguine that you're out

(18:20) all right okay so we're these observational so just as the classic ancient Greeks as they were described this they would talk about for example how essentially all four of these elements would be present let's say in a log right so for one thing you know that if the log is freshly cut and it's still quite wet it's harder for it to burn since fires in opposition to the water but as it dries out it makes it more easy to burn and then when you ignite it then the fire as far as the Greeks were concerned where is it

(18:57) released from the wood as is the air which is released in the form of smoke and maybe sometimes in steam and then also a little bit of liquid will come out or water will kind of drip out of it but there's not much left because it's dry already wood and then what's left is essentially ash and the ash then according to this theory is much more wholly composed of the element of Earth and so therefore is much less flammable so you can do this again right so you've already reduced it from a more mixed state that has all of the elements in it

(19:30) into a state actually all the four states where they're more separated depending on where they all went to so that's the idea okay what's the fifth element ether yes so it's not it's not love as in the movie The Fifth Element or quintessence which is just in their way of saying Fifth Element actually and pedicle ease does include love in his system but love is is actually affecting he's saying that that's a force that is actually affecting the four elements as opposed to having it be the fifth element so the fifth element ether is

(20:07) essentially the element that is above the lunar sphere so if this is the celestial element this is what's going on in the heavens and what the heavens are composed of as opposed to the the ones that are sublunar their earthly ones that we concern ourselves with here so there's the for terrestrial elements along with the fifth element celestial element and their associated then with each one of them with the Platonic solids we've seen how excited all of the pre-socratics and also later Greek philosophers are with mathematics since

(20:38) they've discovered essentially something that exists that has it doesn't have physical existence and yet and yet it can be kind of shown to always be true and so therefore trying to understand the existence and essence of things that don't necessarily have physical existence or can't have physical existence becomes one of the core issues for all of this early philosophy and so one of these things that is so super neat is that there are only you know these five geometric forms essentially the little triangular pyramid the cube

(21:19) as a huge urn the dodecahedron you know that are able in the hex its execution what's it called IC Heatran dodecahedron in the anyway yeah the one with the six or the pinned yeah techie hydron dodecahedron yes dota is twelve anyway a nice arc Adrienne anyway so there's another one that's there's one more what nice a cohesion so I should have written them down the name yes that way I'd remember anyway I remember them as being the dice that you had when you played Dungeons and Dragons right yeah but in anyway you know anyway

(22:02) each one of those then the idea is there they're associated with that and in some cases the philosophers thought this literally so they thought that essentially when you got down to the tiny the tiny components that that firewood would essentially be like that and one of the reasons why you can tell that it's so so pointy like that is that why fire hurts and everything like that to tip you to the touch whereas for example water you know is is in this shape that's more spherical here that is why it's all you know liquidy all

(22:33) together and making that kind of liquid feel and earth being the only one of these 5 solids that that tessellate so that you could actually make essentially a foundation or brick or buildings or something like that that that's the reason why the earth is like that you know the words a solid and made of all these little tiny tiny cubes like that so that certainly is one of the thoughts that they had that maybe each one of these elements is essentially that shape yes what is what's whew yeah where does spear fit it and the other don't have an

(23:07) element for spear yeah is not sphere cousin go to you have to hold microphone you're good at microphone holding but not yourself I I think so because so the this the last one here the 20-sided one is it's so much closer to a sphere that that's essentially you know the one that I mean that's the spiritual one right so the quintessence is the one that is the one that's closest to the divine or is the divine one of these elements but it's usually because they if they didn't have that fifth one they would have made

(23:44) its sphere I think like you say but given the fact that they have five of these they don't have the sphere isn't one of them so these are each ones of geometric form as opposed to with a with this multi sided object okay so we've talked about this a few times is this pre known Newtonian theory of motion that is again all based on than these four elements and you can kind of see it in the diagram of their of Earth water air and fire in Latin there where the earth is at the center of the cosmos it's a sphere and everything you know

(24:23) essentially Earth and water are the heavier elements and they're they're actually seeking to go downward towards the center of the cosmos which is why Earth being the heaviest gets down at the bottom and that's where the whole solid beauty of where we're standing is from and then on top of that then is water like the ocean that is on top of the earth or lakes and then air and then finally fire you know which is at the it's just always trying to get up and escape you know whenever fire is lit it doesn't go down ever but anyway its idea

(24:55) of it is that not there's no idea of gravitation so we don't have any of Newton's and any of Newton's laws or theories for gravitation or anything like that and so this the sense of it is that the reason why things are seeking these places is because that's their purpose or end as opposed to anyway are now our understanding that we have now okay so how do we did to the humors so classical medicine so integrated into this elemental theory that is classical medicine so Hippocrates who we've mentioned another pre-socratic who's not

(25:40) quite a contemporary is a little bit about one generation after in pedigrees he applies then that elemental theory or the theory of these four elements to a systems of the body so of living things of living animals essentially those four elements are aligned with four body fluids that we've talked about which are called humors and so the alignment here is fire with the yellow bile earth with black bile air with blood and phlegm with water and also with those same than elemental and qualities that of each one

(26:17) those having that and so therefore you're in that same sense there's like a natural quality to each one of these particular bodily fluids which you know therefore are also meant to be in balance like everything is supposed to be in balance in sort of this harmonious Greek system but can get out of balance which is what we've talked about in the in the quiz so from that early part from Hippocrates through the whole Hellenistic period and into the Roman period in the same way that we have a kind of a Roman systemization of

(26:52) astronomy by Ptolemy we have by Galen who is a Greek in the Roman Empire alias Galen Colinas substantially adds then to what the the corpus of ancient Greek medicine up until that time so this guy is like super prolific so Galen apparently all of his surviving texts we have so much of his work so in on the one hand he wrote like crazy wrote a lot of stuff but then on the other hand it's quite popular so it's a lot has survived and so as a result nearly half of all extant ancient Greek literature is by Galen so that's a lot through things

(27:33) like the section of animals and actually vivisection of humans it was illegal in the Roman Empire to dissect humans but he was able to cut living people open I guess Galen pioneered understanding of things like the circulatory system and so he was able to cut animals open and essentially observe that that there are essentially two your your circulatory system has essentially two different colors if you ever seen the diagrams of you know like essentially the arteries and the vein and the veins and the one there's a blue and the one are red the

(28:07) way it's represented in our in our diagrams and Galen speculated that both of these were separate systems and so and that they were circulating independently of each other as opposed to how we now understand it or whether essentially the both goes through the heart and there at oxygen SATA drain to once you know from the arteries yeah okay so as a result of all this theorizing as a result of all this prolific writing and explanations that Galen had this is a system that held sway for some 1,300 more years or more actually as we've

(28:46) seen and so it ends up having a complete system so we have this idea of the humor which is to say the particular bodily fluid that you have we have the organ which Galen believed or theorized generated that that liquid so all blood is produced by the liver as far as Galen and other classical physicians felt which is not the case but anyway that was the theoretical possibility the idea that again yellow bile and black bile don't necessarily refer to anything in terms of actual modern identification but there were these organs that were

(29:28) producing something or other you know and so they determined that the yellow bile is here coming from the gallbladder and the black bile from your spleen and then the phlegm I guess your brain and your lungs are working in concert to produce phlegm and yeah you can produce phlegm out of your lungs yourself okay and then each one of these like we said is associated with a elements air earth fire water each one of those elements has qualities each one of those then leads to a temperaments and each one of those temporary temperaments is not just

(30:10) found in like everything every every one of these components in the same way that air earth fire and water is done in everything it's not a pure version of each one of those things in that same exact way that even if you let's say our I always thought before I took that test just now I was thought that I was saying good but it turns out that I'm choleric so anyway that's what I'm now that's what I get from the quiz anyway so anyway so it's true so anyway so well now that a but just because I'm choleric doesn't mean I don't have a bunch of

(30:45) sanguine and phlegmatic component within me it just means that that's my dominant trait and then that same exact way that since everything here is kind of this interconnected system essentially there's also with persons life cycle from infancy to youth to adulthood to old age there's sort of a natural tendency to have one of these or other be you're kind of ruling your ruling humor and so you know when you're young you tend to be you know way more hot-blooded and and and decisive when you're maybe in youth and then when

(31:23) you're in old age you're coughing up a lot more flam and and that kind of thing and so then these are also then associated with the seasons right and so I think that Mike was even so you know what well I guess the four seasons is a different musical number but it's totally different when a musical number but anyway so we also have four seasons in the northern hemisphere anyway so not so much in the tropics and stuff so with the seasons there's no season in the southern hemisphere so they're just the reverse so you so in the southern

(31:57) hemisphere people are are sanguine at the end of their life right sanguine throughout their lives okay so from theory to practice so when you have this kind of a theoretical system what did they how are they trying to implement it and we've seen we at the beginning we talked a little bit about some of the extreme techniques for trying to balance the humors the goal though is to balance the humors so Galen and his medieval successors believe that all disease results from imbalance right so they call this dyscrasia dyscrasia

(32:39) which is an imbalance in your humors the goal of the medicine is to create you crazy ax which is sounds you so crazy but anyway you it was always good right so in EU right like eulogy speaking speaking well of the Dead or utopia with a EU would be a good place whereas utopia with a that was we as we spelled it means nowhere right as opposed to good place so there look trying to find you crazier or balanced and so a lot of the things that they were doing of course they didn't have modern medicine and more or less no until very recently

(33:18) when modern medicine started to become amazingly effective and is able to do all sorts of things between immunizations and with penicillin and with all kinds of different surgical techniques and then now you know with other kinds of more radical techniques for - for going after cancer and things like that we had an experience that is different from anybody else in all of human history which is before this time in this one location when this is all that possible essentially there wasn't a lot you could do that has a lot more

(33:52) effect than placebo and we know even to this day that placebo actually has a quite a good effect and lots and lots of different things you know can only be shown it's like for example one of the things that Landrieu admits that there's studies that show mindfulness meditation has all sorts of beneficial effects but it doesn't actually convert to what yeah yeah exactly compared to what so I mean so these lots of other things are equally like you were saying like having a dog and petting your dog has that same

(34:24) effect as does placebo you know and so in other words a placebo can have you know which is you know something that where you just believe it's gonna cure you even though it's just a sugar pill that that will have a serious effect and so a lot of the things that that pre-modern medicine was doing was quite effective you know if you at a certain point if a person has a big fever and you start doing like serious bloodletting that can kill them as can some of these very powerful purgatives and homedics and things like that if

(34:55) they were already quite sick but doing other things like having people have rest trying to get them to restore about diet they maybe you've been eating you know irregularly or drinking lots and that kind of thing giving them a lot of attention doing other kinds of things that actually is likely to all by itself be helpful and did cause you know a certain degree of here's although obviously some things are not curable in that sense Elizabeth my tutor when I was an undergraduate once said that up to up until about 1890 going to a doctor would

(35:31) decrease rather than increase your chances of survival yes so yeah I think that that also the case can be made for that oh you know and so especially for example if you were gonna go to a place like you know there was one of the hospitals or someplace like that because then you're especially in you're becoming infected by other sick people that are all around and things like that and the doctors are also because they don't have basics of they don't anything about bacteriology they don't know anything about you know this kind of

(36:02) washing and cleanliness they they're infecting people so they're actually also spreading disease and this kind of a thing but that said some of these things that they're doing with change you know advising you to change your diet there are certain things that they're doing that were effective techniques so it wasn't that there was nothing going and going on through this whole time but like you say it may not have even been better than if they just if you just calm down yourself and not a you know not done anything so ok and in

(36:32) that same sense there is in fact throughout the Middle Ages in the Christian West a a competing way to be healed that is also has more or less the same kind of level of effectiveness or not you know as medicine would have been able to do so it's a comparable thing which is to say what I call now ritual healing that it takes place essentially what people in the Middle Ages thought of as being supernatural miracles and so with the fall of the Western Roman Empire so in the kind of area that we deal with in France and

(37:13) England and Italy and Spain Latin knowledge of Greek medicine really atrophies and so they're still doing this kind of thing but it's often could be supplemented with let's say much more superstitious practices and so we've seen this before when we've done our for example lecture Arab perspectives on the Crusades and highly trained essentially in the Greek philosophical trifid tradition Muslim physicians you know are viewing essentially these Western European physicians and just bejust they're just like well if these guys you

(37:48) know they're they're horrible they're they're just you know doing all of this crazy superstitious stuff so one of the one of the practices is for example because there's a sense that maybe what the thing that's happened the problem with you is that there's a demon inside of you and so for example cutting open a like a making an incision of a cross and your forehead or something like that is maybe one way to allow the demon to get out or it could also give you you know brain damage and infection and kill you

(38:15) immediately you know which it also did so anyway some of those kind of things were were supplemented but a long sight medicine another thing that was that existed is a systematized way for ritual healing so one of the things that might happen if you're in an agricultural society where let's say 97% of everybody is essentially a peasant and so something might happen where you are a part of your peasant village and community and you do something that means that you have to essentially be kicked out of the society you've you've

(38:51) committed something that isn't enough that they get a kill you you know like you know something if you murder somebody on whatever is some kind of a crime like that but you've done something that's causing such horrible shame or whatever and that could have either a either just go and are losing your livelihood and you become a beggar or that could also be associated with even if it could cause a physiological effect you know where a person experiences they're so struck at this being kicked out of society and losing

(39:21) their whole way of life and things like that they also develop some kind of paralysis or they become develop a kind of - they can't see anymore or any kind of thing like that and so then they might spent years and years living essentially with the beggars and the homeless people essentially on the merchants of all of these societies who are now living along the roadsides and who are begging for alms and who are outside of churches and things like that and then though at key moments the bishop or the priest you

(39:52) know you will in the church they will have for example the relics of the saints they will have a translation of the relics where they move the Saints relics around and the on invite people essentially become for healing and so it can be a situation where you have lived as a blind beggar you go into this kind of ritual healing you are understood to have been healed by having gone through this transformation in some cases there is a actual physio physiological change in some cases who knows to what degree you were before really paralyzed and

(40:27) whatnot in some cases that the healing doesn't work right but in many cases essentially it's understood that there is a miracle but the one of the the real miracle and Avenue here is that then you are able to be restored to inside the society you no longer have to be a beggar but now you can go back and live either as a caretaker at the church or any other kind of thing where you are part of the society again and so this is something that it's hard for us to grasp because we really are living in this time period of modern medicine where you

(41:00) know we have particular defects that are coming with you know different you know different things and different procedures but given you know that this is essentially stacked up alongside what the actual physicians are doing and they're you know fairly similar and also you know another thing that would be stacked up against this is you know a local you know wise woman you know so it's just essentially folk magic which I'm not going to go into but essentially that would also be something that is also it's which is not the philosophical

(41:29) magic but is essentially the localized remedies of what people are doing there so given that all of those things only have so much efficacy any one of them you know may actually we think an actually yielding act you know reasonable results yes question besides before yeah you said there's an imbalance that causes all kinds of diseases like I that's too much or too low what is the optimum about stage for this yes system I mean the optimum stage is you know you crazy a right so it's like the idea if you have this four

(42:06) system right and so then what we should have been able to do I guess in your test is you should have gotten equal numbers of A's B's C's and DS you know or something like that do you know something you V so it's hard to get them I should have eight questions you know so that you could achieve balance I stacked the dice in my own favor here you know they're you know in terms of that but essentially yeah the idea of it is is that when no one of these things is predominant on you know dominating right and so you weren't doing rash

(42:35) stuff and so or any of the other kinds of things and specifically though how they can tell you're sick we're out of balance is because you're sick and so that's more or less the system is self vindicating self validating right because essentially what they what happens is is that you you have pneumonia or something like that and then you get a fever then it's clearly because you're so hot you can tell that you know you are you know sanguine and possibly choleric right and so then as a result of that you could think and you

(43:15) can tell that's you know you're out of you know you know you the heat is showing that you're out of balance and so you want to go back to just what everybody else is like you know just a regular peasant who's farming or if you're a noble you know whatever you know they kind of go back to fighting and stuff like that in in in normal health right so hopefully this is just like this is the system of what and what normal health is if you aren't having any any negative conditions it's when you have all of these kinds of any kind

(43:46) of symptom this is their what they understanding that the explanation for why you are having some kind of symptom because of out of balance okay so anyway we're talking here a little bit about the Christian West but there's another major air and more important air actually of ancient Greek medicine in the Islamic world in the Muslim world and so Greek medicine actually survives a lot better in the Muslim world where Galax many texts were translated quite early on into Arabic including even for example the only biography that we have

(44:23) of him we only have the Arabic we don't have the Greek doesn't survive numerous Muslim physicians and philosophers built on this basic idea of humoralism that heat the system of humors including al-razi who's in the 9th century in early 10th century who considered for example the effects of climate on general health and we had we had when we did the Arab perspectives on the West we were talking about how since the people like al-razi we're talking about how there is essentially the different climate zones and if you are

(45:04) living in the in the nice Mediterranean climate like he was that that's where your humors are all in really good affect but if you're like the Franks the Westerners who are all living in the cold area that's why they they are totally out of humour and so that's why they their skin is pale white and lacks any color and all these kind of things because of they're living in a climate that affects their their general health and that's why they're so rash and they constantly attack us for no reason and they're barbarians and they smell so bad

(45:34) and all those kind of things because they live with it from a bad climate we Westerners so also then the polymath even Sina Avicenna as he called in the West who in the early 11th century is just his writings on pretty well everything have major effects both in the Muslim world but especially also as they're translated into the Latin had caused an intellectual revolution or help with one in the Renaissance of the 12th century so I have a after the Islamic Golden Age here in addition to all of his work so he's

(46:08) writing on all the topics that we're talking about today tonight astronomy alchemy geography cosmology logic mathematics physics philosophy theology he made very significant contributions to medieval medicine through for example anatomical studies so this is a diagram of nervous systems from one of his texts in Arabic and so you can see that the it's no longer the case for him anyway that he wasn't he wasn't under the same strictures about not doing dissection that Galen had been under he for example identifies the

(46:42) potential of airborne transmission of diseases lots of other insights for example practical stuff if there's a he's the first person to write about if there's a problem in delivery to be able to start using forceps for example so there's a bunch of different things like that sometimes called the father of early modern medicine so for the West as with so much than a Greek science serious study of Medicine is reintroduced and reinjected into the Latin West via Islam along with the Muslim texts so they don't the

(47:24) Westerners don't only just get Aristotle they get Avicenna who is explaining Aristotle so all of the different recent thought about how to reconcile for example a monotheistic religion although I'll be at a little different one with ancient Greek philosophy is already all that's been tackled a lot by Muslim thinkers and that's the kind of thing that people like Anselm and Abelard and Agustin are busily not accustomed but that I guess in a Canterbury but anyway not not and not so much that but anyway these later thinkers so when the this

(47:58) for example starts the existence of the universities in the medieval West which are essentially a creation of the medieval Christian churches but the ones that we have like for example Paris and Oxford which are focused on more things like philosophy and theology and Bologna which is for example on roman law the two that are really focused on medicine Montpelier and Salerno are these ones that are in that immediate transitional zone so Salerno is down in the norman kingdom of Sicily that has large Greek Jewish and Muslim

(48:36) populations pili air is in the essentially the Provence area the land red oak area anyway and is close to Muslim Spain and so Muslim doctors were more more often even Jewish doctors who were trained in the Muslim world comment are essentially court physicians and also our teachers and trained personal transmitters in addition to all the texts that they bring revolutionising essentially or you know bringing Western humor illest medicine into line with what had been understood in the Islamic world so you know this gets just to like this kind of

(49:21) amazing composite medieval scientific philosophical worldview and diagram I feel like like the the monk who drew this thing you know as God who have been like just so happy because you could really you know have a sense that you really understand everything about how the world is because you can do a here a cosmological diagram where you really have it all you know fit together so not only do you have you know the elements air earth you know fire and water you have their qualities that they share dry cold wet hots you have around here the

(50:02) zodiac Aries you know taurus gemini and the corresponding calendar you have the cardinal directions east west north south you have the these again these moments of the the seasons and also life cycle so essentially just how you can understand more or less every component of life the universe and everything yeah I just think you Pisces and Aquarius is under fire in the air not on not close to water yeah so where is your right so they so in fact in his diagram here he's not taking into account the the way the astrological signs are

(50:47) working so this is this is actually in in your rated that the the the zodiac is in zodiacal ordered you know or whatever cop calendar order as opposed to the fire sense we'll get to that when we get to to astrology but you're right each one of those should like you say be corresponding to one of the elements which it's not into right yeah we got summer over here like being turns its into finally right and uh yeah over in the so that part of it doesn't work as well oh yeah so maybe these are constantly you know actually in motion

(51:31) that would be very cool that's true they weren't so much worried about the southern hemisphere I know that we I know that we think about the southern hemisphere a lot here but I think that the the monks weren't worried about it okay Australians watching so I know yeah we are thinking about the southern hemisphere here just like the monks weren't thinking about it okay so I was just at the Agha Khan Museum and they have this amazing last for Saturday and it was amazing medieval Andalusia astrolabe which is this astronomical and also for use for

(52:19) astrological calculations the one that they have is in is in Arabic Hebrew and Latin which is pretty pretty neat but essentially these this this cross-pollination that's happening in Sicily and especially in Spain and and so you know moving from medicine now to astronomy's last astrology through the Middle Ages we've said before that the primary reason that Christians and Muslims and Jews actually all three have four for astronomy and astrology is actually astrological people are very not don't actually get over wanting the idea that you may be

(53:02) able to predict your future so divination is always important but Christians need some astronomy and math in order to calculate Easter which is a really complicated thing to do Muslims use astronomy to determine latitude in the direction of Mecca and so there's reasons what about why you need to be able to use the Stars in order to do astronomical calculation so Ptolemy we'd mentioned he's here he's a second century Roman citizen from Alexandria he's not related to the famous dynasty of Ptolemies Claudius Ptolemy and

(53:41) Cleopatra but he has that same name anyway he's an astronomer astrologer a geographer and a mathematician and he's usually credited with the Ptolemaic system although he's really an heir than to Aristotle and earlier Greek systems he's fixes it a little so he has a book that comes into the West that's called the tetra byblos and as I mentioned here there's really no difference between astrology and astronomy for them the reason for it is that there's they understood anyway that there's clearly a relationship between

(54:14) heavenly objects and what happens on earth so something is going on they couldn't describe it but it's essentially forced at a distance so why are the tides affected in some way by the moon and also other kinds of things like you know the Sun of course is is you know in the seasons and things like that you know those are causing you know there's the movement of the heavens are causing the change of seasons the sun's daily motion and whether it's up or not is causes whether it's warm or not you know this sort of thing so these are

(54:46) ways of understanding that something is happening at a distance and so the the extrapolation is well if it's all connected here something more could maybe be happening - so anyway these are canonical for astrology the book becomes in the one of the main books is that makes his way into Latin as the Alma guests because again is like like the rest comes through the Arabic so arabic allah Magesty for the greek Magesty which is greatest so it's originally called the Mathematica sin Texas and it's preserved in the Muslim world and translated into

(55:25) Latin twice in the 12th century and it just has an enormous effect on astronomy and science in general so one of the ways that we can kind of even see a lot of this legacy besides even the name alma guest is that for example on nearly all of the english names for stars are all have Arabic origins so we even think of these names like actually all the names of stars but if stars name our name things like Altair you know then you can see the the Arabic for the in front of you know the word or Aldebaran all of these words that are like that I

(56:03) mean our Arabic loanwords and our biggest chunk of Arabic for long words they're essentially all the names of the stars I have a college classmate who's an astronomer so as his wife their son is called Rigel and their daughter is called Lyra Wow people you know what this trend is is has been pretty amazing so when I was when I was born in in the United States in the 1970s it had we had pretty well whittled down for white suburban Americans anyway we'd pretty well whittle down to like 12 names for boys and and just about as many for girls and

(56:40) so everybody who's my age who is a girl is named Jennifer you know and so but now it's amazing you know that bill so I think everybody who is a Generation X or whatever got upset about the fact that everybody was named Matt you know and Jennifer and so now they've named their kids everything you know that's amazing yes all of the different names okay your sister's name is Jennifer yeah I'm not saying anything against Jennifer's it was a it was the most popular name girl if it if your name's Jennifer you're likely

(57:12) part of the seventies in the same way that like when my niece who's just entering college right now is named Emily so that was like the top name 18 years ago for girls you know and so anyway but there but there was nowhere near as big a bump as Jennifer was right so if you do those things because everybody's named everything so you know kids are named all kinds of wonderful things down if you named Altair and Rigel like you say well that kind of thing so other words though where there's a bunch of other technical

(57:40) loanwords in astronomy that have also come so Zenith azimuth these are also Arabic loanwords because essentially all of astronaut astronomy and astrology is brought carted back over into the Latin West through transmission but at this time by the air from Arab science so we've looked at this a little bit before we've done the Ptolemaic universe but essentially the idea of the cosmos inherited from Aristotle and Ptolemy is there is a spherical earth at the center and then ever out from that there are the seven moving planets so in this case

(58:21) every one of the celestial objects that isn't part of the fixed stars that are out at the final sphere so where all the stars that are in the constellations are and never move in apart from each other they all move together as according to your observation from Earth whereas everything from Jupiter to Mars to Venus to the moon to the Sun they move and round in the sky against those fixed stars so the constellations stay the same but the others these planets is what it meant originally it's essentially a moving celestial object it

(58:54) gets the fixed stars so yeah so done so the comment is that Dante's Inferno is based on that so Dante's Inferno is also he's like it's like written just immediately like after Aquinas writes out essentially the Summa Theologica and or is not Taylor how does it it's just it's it's we always call it Summa Theologica but it's tail og I think what it is but anyway so when the the some of Theology is summed up by Aquinas Dante's read that and it's like he almost just makes a novel you know or big epic poem about like you say this

(59:36) reconciled Aristotelian Ptolemaic cosmology that exists in in essentially this perfect system that Aquinas is made and so now they now essentially that you read the Dante is just making making a wonderful picture of it yep so I was mentioning before this idea that the fixed stars if you if you do with a camera that you set it up so that you can have them all turn they'll all move around what's the star in the middle yeah Polaris the North Star exactly and so that one's the one that doesn't move but then they all turn around it and so then

(1:00:13) and meanwhile though then the planets move around you know throughout the year as you observe from the earth anyway against those and so when they do that they though are all moving more or less through this one particular line that we call the ecliptic which is also the zodiac and so all of the all of the constellations the 12 constellations you know that are in that one path that all the planets run around in in the Sun of the Moon that is essentially why the zodiac is called out as being especially important in astronomy in astrology

(1:00:53) especially astrology yeah yeah Robert at the University of Toronto in the Astronomy Department they have monthly free lectures I had one of the technician guys there up and it was explaining that there were 88 constellations uh-huh and then a lady on Costa Coast was doing the interview she was the astrologer and she said gathers all these extra ones but there's a ruling laid down the world the using ten or twelve right well this is the planets what'll happen is so there's a bunch of other constellations over here that

(1:01:41) aren't in the zodiac right so here's Cassiopeia you know we got we have talked about the North Star and so that's in the Little Dipper or I'm sorry the Little Bear anyway admits you know Ursa Minor but it's also we call the Little Dipper you know so anyway that constellation doesn't apply to astrology because you will never look up in the night sky and see Venus up there so Venus is a wandering wandering planet if you were at nighttime observing but Venus will never be up there in Polaris it will only be in one of these twelve

(1:02:18) constellations so all the planets including the moon of the Sun only stay in this dotted yellow line they don't wander all the way around here and so why is that why don't they go over there so that's where that twelve that comes in the beingness that's right because because what we understand now but they didn't know then is that there is essentially a plain you know of how the solar system works and as the different planets orbit the Sun you know they are all in that same plane it would have been completely possible there are let's

(1:02:51) say in some star systems if you have a like a rogue planet that has been captured it could come in and it could be you know it could be doing this and so we know that comets and things like that do that but the but the the planets that you can actually see and so the ones that the ancients had available are all in that same plane and so that's why this is 12 signs of the zodiac are so important right because essentially are there 12 you could have divided those you could have divided those stars constellations are

(1:03:24) fairly arbitrary right so you you can just you they need they wanted to make 12 so 12 they picked you know so that so that they could have divided that up into made 20 constellations that we wanted to but the ancient Babylonians already made it to that number in order to have why why would you why would you want 12 yeah to get to the monthly cycle so that so that we could have essentially the months kind of line up with the solar year I mean they don't properly write but essentially it's part of this calculation and so as a result

(1:03:57) of that they picked the number of constellations based on the number of the length that the lunar year is matching up against the solar year as opposed to starting with constellations and trying to figure this out yeah there's all kinds of wonderful reasons why and it ends up being great number as opposed to 365 which is a mess and that has 3 or 65 and 1/4 which has you know confounded everybody trying to make a calendar you know throughout all of history the 12 12 months going into a year is this wonderful coincidence that

(1:04:37) ended up being you know like you say there's so many wonderful things that you can do with the magic number 12 and so that ends up being really good just like the kind of again completely there's no particular reason why it should be this way but it is enough to understand why it completely confused everybody in antiquity all through the Middle Ages which is the when you're from the earth and observing the Sun and the moon both kind of look like they're the same size you know and so that's like that's confusing you know because

(1:05:07) it could it didn't it could have been any quite different from that so now I'm completely possible if we had a son that let's say it was a bigger bigger colder son then then it could be a lot bigger in the sky and we could had a moon that's any size you know so there so there than any number of different things that would have been quite different you know if we had been if we had been in the star system where we're on a moon that is orbiting a gas giant that's order orbiting a star then we would have had a completely different set of stuff in

(1:05:39) antiquity to work with as it is to having a son in the moon be the same sizes enough to really you know that's very confounding to people because you'd want that to be something to that that Valerie has a comment or a question yeah I'm kind of surprised at that actually because you know I'm sure people here have you know if you're older have seen like a total eclipse of the Moon and you can tell it's like it looks like a dark brownie orange ball with like bumps and stuff you know you can see with the naked eye hanging in the sky right yeah

(1:06:15) and it you know it's just like totally change of this nature when it's in and fully uh full Eclipse but when the Sun is it's just you know avoid right you know and you can't even look at it I guess maybe people in ancient times looked at it and burned out there but there you know burned out there you know retinas or whatever but yeah but they're so different you know and I would have thought that you know over time that you know with eclipses they would have observed that really major difference well so so you're right that I'm just

(1:06:45) saying that for the earliest observers that they would you know that they would have seen that they're relatively similar size and I think that's kind of an odd coincidence for it to have to try to struggle through and so that's why I'm just suggesting that for example in mythology there's often a Sun God and a moon goddess or a Sun goddess and a moon god that are kind of balancing each other but you're right by a certain point of time they are they have enough geometry that they're able to tell that the moon is you know is smaller and so

(1:07:16) that's why actually in the Ptolemaic system they understand for example like you say from observing eclipses that the moon is closer and so they know it's smaller because of geometry right and so they've they've done that kind of calculation they they are looking for unfortunately their calculation ends up not being they're not able to there's other kinds of mysteries that the the observation won't help them with so for example they're expecting because they if the earth was moving around the Sun it's moving and so they were

(1:07:51) expecting that the Stars would have some kind of apparent motion against each other but the reason why they don't just because they're so far away that it took until the middle or the end of the 19th century before we had equipment that you could actually verify that right so it was completely impossible with the unaided eye to do that so okay so this is anyway the 12 signs of the zodiac are those constellations that are spread across the ecliptic and had been there since antiquity so so picked out as the important ones for this one of the

(1:08:22) things that we've said was a problem with the Ptolemaic system is that since as we know we actually are going around the Sun and so for example is Mars that as we do that at at different rates although Mars stays in that ecliptic what ends up happening is is we kind of pass it by we're seeing it from different angles and so the apparent motion that it has is that it seems like it's been moving a right along through the sky night by night by night and then it turns around and goes back which which astronomers our astrologers called

(1:08:53) retrograde motion and then it goes back and goes again and it's because of this overtaking that happens in you know how we now understand it but the way then that was understood or explained in antiquity is through the idea that there are these epicycles so in other words that even though they're in this particular sphere each one of those planets the planets is in itself then on another sphere which is rotating maybe a different direction that is causing you know a retrograde motion and so anyway that's how they solved that and then

(1:09:26) Ptolemy fixed it with one more thing because they didn't want to have ellipses so we know that the orbits are elliptical they want like circles and spheres are perfect and so that was two to urgence point what about the sphere so in this case this all of the celestial bodies are moving in spherical motion and so in order to make that happen the way it works is that that the all the circles are going not around for example the earth but they're going around a eccentric as it's called that is between that is a midpoint here

(1:10:02) between an equity and the earth and these are just mathematical points and so they don't have any existence but those mathematical points when you put all of that together you can explain all the observational data that takes you all the way into the capacity of a renaissance time because essentially the mathematics will predict where the planets should be able to be observational II with this system and so that's one of the reasons why this was able to last you know as it did for 1300 years or so so yeah twelve hundred years

(1:10:37) so the capacity to explain the observational data it wasn't actually as important we really you know since we have have science fiction you have spaceships and you are even though the science fiction is usually more space opera because you can get around really fast we are definitely thinking about all of this kind of from the outside and so from being in a spaceship and seeing how it all works in this case all of our ancestors they were thinking about it from standing you know on the on the ground and looking up and seeing stars

(1:11:08) anywhere I you know we go outside after this and we can't see any stars here at Toronto probably you may be able to see it's cloudy tonight anyway yeah so even without that though the light pollution means that I can only ever from you know see just a handful maybe if there's a bright planet I can see a couple of those and I have to use my my phone app which tells me where all the stars are you know and you can see oh this is all the stars sit down there in the southern hemisphere and all these you know but I

(1:11:33) can't see them in real life anyway okay so use for predicting the future though so so what kind of mentioned the motion in the heavens as everybody observed what you're looking at the heavens it's more regular and predictable than motion than below the lunar sphere the sublunar zone here that we all inhabit so from antiquity people then observe that there's this force at a distance the Sun warms the earth moon somehow affects the sides there's this thing where the monthly cycle is thought to anyway be related to the

(1:12:06) menstrual period so it does seem like there's all kinds of strange forces at a distance that is very hard to wrap our heads around and frankly we've talked about it how like even when you're in the modern era in the Cartesian system trying to even figure out how how magnetism is working you know because nothing's touching anything how is gravitation working you know because we would like something to be touching you know in other words you know in order to make that kind of thing happen so it is hard in terms of a given

(1:12:36) common sense to have theorized how to make how to make force at a distance work so the way it's understood here is just like the humoralism of the Western medicine the astrology then builds on these elements and does urgent had pointed out before in fact that even though those those are in the the the order that they are because air you know air I'm sorry fire earth air water fire earth air water so essentially again so it's so lucky that there's the magic number of 12 because now we can have you can divide up the four elements and

(1:13:13) every one of the star science gets to be attached to one of the three elements and so that's three times four and it's a wonderful doing yes oh yeah so it should be but what if I meant what am I missing what am i mincing Libre sorry Leo and I meant to write Libre yeah so I got confused so yeah so that should be Libra okay so the idea then here and I don't know all of the ins and outs of astrology and I'm not going to claim to but essentially the idea here is is that again these are interconnected with the the fact that the whole cosmos here is

(1:14:01) based on these same kinds of elements and in the same way that there's meant to be balance in the body each one of these things these governing motions so when the plant each one of the different planets especially the Sun but the other ones too are in you know different places in the sky on different particular dates including for example then where you are when the date when you were born and so that's giving you your Sun Sign but also just even doing horoscopes and things like that for finding auspicious days to do different

(1:14:33) things it's based on them calculating where each one of these planets is against against the the zodiac constellations that they would be you know against and so using ptolemies tables you could very easily calculate that without having to go around and look and try to find them all in fact it's hard to find no nope no for sure I mean I the way I can tell that I'm looking at that Jupiter or something like that is because my app tells me that that that's Jupiter in Virgo and not you know just some star I forgot

(1:15:04) exists you know so anyway so in all of those kind of ways then there's this there's the sense that because the heavens are all connected to us everything is all connected in one perfect system and we are able to see and for example predict things like months and seasons and any other number of things including eclipses likewise then there's some kind of information that is being presented us to us here that if we just were to figure out exactly to calculate it exactly right we would also be able to determine that

(1:15:38) this is an auspicious day to do something or that based on who what your particular the auspices or the day that you were born the moment you were born weather right now is a propitious time for you to be doing this or that or whether you should just go back home and try not to you know be in a car accident there's something like that right so that whole sense of that is is interrelated to a much older idea of sympathetic magic which is one of our earliest notions I think and people can't help but feel I think still it's still inside of us and

(1:16:15) so based on this idea that the motion on earth is connected to these heavenly bodies and they all share properties so one of the things that sympathetic magic does is for example if the moon is governing certain qualities and certain powers if you have let's say a little moon amulet you know or something like that and then you have with you then that's bringing that kind of moon leap our you know to you when you need that so or if it is governed by you know let's say the the the warm force and it may well be that something like that

(1:16:49) will affect the humor that you need right and so in all those kind of senses and so one of the ways that we still do I mention it all the time that we still do sympathetic magic too is essentially the ideas motion in the heavens affects motion here or motion here will affect some other kind of motion and so you're at home you're watching you know the football game and somebody has thrown the big long pass and you'll go you know see you know everybody is you know move moving you know or football or any game you're gonna play you know that to try

(1:17:20) to make it go you know so actually so we you're sympathetically causing sympathetic magic do to move you know that you know so anyway in that same kind of sense this is kind of the idea of the system also in this particular case this is a now when this has come across now to the West this is a Spanish manuscript that is actually taking it's like a big long catalog and this is just Gemini and it's taking all of these different embodied pictures of stars and constellations and how each one of those different stars and constellations when

(1:17:55) when sharing the effect of Jim and how that's gonna affect have you no effects on given days and things like that so trying to make a very complicated system if it was simply a simple system simple system would have the problem of just constantly producing error right you know so I my name if a ver it my favorites I've said before my favorite story movie about the life of Jesus is the Monty Python it's the life of Brian and when the the Magi when the astrologers come the three kings to give Brian's mother you know the they Frank

(1:18:32) gold frankincense and myrrh thinking that they have come to the right place to see you know the Christ child she she asks and your astrologers say well you know you know what is he then and they say well he's our Lord and the King of the Jews he's the Messiah and she says and that that's Capricorn is it he says no that's just him though I would say otherwise there'd be a lot of them you know you know so but the idea of it is then that you have all of these additional if you're gonna just say everybody that's born for example in in

(1:19:03) Chinese astrology if everybody's born on the year of the dog is gonna all have the same fate it seems a little but it wouldn't make a lot of sense because not everybody born in 1970 is doing all the same things that I'm doing some of the people in my graduating class of high school had died you know and that kind of a thing and so the the answer is that there's all of these additional calculations that have to be made that explain why our original idea didn't really work you know in terms of the definition I don't know if it's legible

(1:19:40) it's okay in in astrology today they called that synastry which is the relationship between the planets or constellations on whatever particular planet you might be focusing on if it's your Sun Sign on so yeah that's the word synastry synastry there we go so this is already in the 13th century it's a chart of synastry it actually quite a beautiful trick okay and so just in the last you know just is to round this out we'll bring in alchemy too and so medicine astrology alchemy so alchemy the name itself we've got that owl in

(1:20:20) the front of it so we can see identify quickly an Arabic loanwords ear from alchimia leukemia which is the Arabic for it it may the know the Arabic is it's not sure there's a dispute about what precisely where that word came from but it also shows them the traditions debt in the West to the medieval Muslim natural philosophers from which it came including people like Avicenna again so the forerunner then of modern chemistry alchemists actually had a bunch of different procedures that they could do that could actually perform

(1:20:56) quite useful chemical processes so they were able through following different formulas through the difference you know heating up the different stuff doing doing different procedures that they would follow essentially in their medieval labs and they could actually you know accomplish certain things with different chemicals that they start with and then they had a bunch of other stuff that whether or not was useful it made for a very impressive displays you know so you know already from if you were in in grade school that if you mix baking

(1:21:29) soda and vinegar together maybe with some red food coloring then suddenly you know you can make a model volcano or there's a lot of other different chemical substances that kids like to play with an experiment they probably shouldn't but anyway and so especially so for example things like mercury which everybody has always thought is such a neat thing that maybe maybe it's a medicine you which not really you know anyway that hasn't stopped people from saying what's so cool it must be there must be something cool about it that you could

(1:21:57) use for medicine but anyway so all those kind of things that were either useful or just plain neat and then though when you're taking into then this idea though that actually not the elemental theory that we have now where we're understanding that the iron and lead and gold our elements oven of themselves atomically if you instead understand it that the underlying theory is that all objects are mixtures you know just in proportion and and method of these four classical elements the natural philosophers of Alken and alchemy you

(1:22:34) know concluded that there would probably be some kind of way that if you just went through the right procedures you would be able to transmute base alloys that you have a dime-a-dozen so all the lead in the world you know you could get fairly cheap and of course if you could make it into gold then suddenly you know you would have all the gold in the world and so obviously the theoretical agent for that is called it's referred to as the Philosopher's Stone or the elixir of life and so although really good alchemists like ever seena discredited

(1:23:10) transmutation of substances so he said those of the chemical craft know well that no change can be effected in the different species of substances so he understood them to you know essentially gold is in its own species and you can't no matter how much you might be able to make a show and make a make it fancy so that you've essentially rusted something or made it look different or maybe taken made an actual compound you can't actually transmute one metal to another it can produce the appearance of change but not actual change devasena said

(1:23:40) nevertheless the idea once you get in your head that you can make gold you know that's kind of one of those popular ideas like that you can divine the future and so once you kind of have it kind of feeling like it's working people continue to believe that and so there's all kinds of legendary accounts that circulate so the people like for example Albert Magnus who is one of the greatest natural scientists and philosophers of the middle and high middle ages he is like credited with as if he's there's accounts that people have that her

(1:24:16) legendary accounts where he's you know successfully once you know did do the transmutation and so now we just have to replicate whatever it was that in this legendary account Albert Magnus did you know in order to ourselves be able to follow in that footsteps and you know Britt make this breakthrough with the philosopher's stone so that we can have gold so in that sense you know as we kind of like you're pulling back to the big picture I mean here's a I think a wonderful medieval diagram that is bringing a lot of these ideas all

(1:24:47) together which is the person s body and essentially all of where the locations may be of the humors and they essentially the governing astrological sign that is related to each one of those different qualities so you can kind of see on amis got the RAM at the top and all the way down Sagittarius you can see you know these kind of images is they're affecting different parts of the body according to this integrated system so I don't think so I think it's it's Latin it's Latin it's just in a it's in a in the Gothic script that yeah

(1:25:27) but it's Latin it's hard to read there's so many ligatures and everything like that when you're reading those it you have to take a bigger free courses in order to be able to get through each one of the different writings so our minds like to see these kind of patterns even amid randomness that's certainly the case and I think one of the reasons then that the ancient Greek system held sway for so many centuries that is this very seductive interconnectivity so we had kind of one explanation for physics emotion for medicine for cosmology and

(1:26:01) they all relate them to these same elements that govern humor stars and every other kind of thing and so it was actually you know as we kind of deconstructed all of those in in early modern science wasn't very easy to be able to pull one out because as you've had to pull any particular thing out like the Ptolemaic system and try to replace it with the Copernican system it's just it's one one pillar that the whole rest of the thing is all connected to and so you have to explain well why how can you pull that pillar out you

(1:26:33) know what about all the other the other parts of parts of this edifice right so you know I go back to my you know just like very excited you know like I say medieval guy who was able to make the diagram understand at all even if there's problems you know with with how it all fits together you can explain all those with epicycles and with you know it had every other kind of thing like that and so you know this kind of thing because you know there's legs so I I mentioned bright weight at the outset of this when we did our test that I thought

(1:27:10) that the four humors were pretty well unknown to people but in fact I've seen on the internet that there's all kinds of different revivals of it and you can take you know what your what's your humor kind of quizzes that are have a lot more questions than the one we did tonight and then come back with at you with this is quite a I didn't make this jerk this is a chart I just got off the internet you know which is essentially defining whether you're an extrovert or an introvert in terms your personality whether you have stable emotions or

(1:27:38) unstable emotions and then these these four categories you know sanguine phlegmatic melancholic Collard Eric and so it's essentially part of a revived humoral istic medicine that people do now as a neo traditional medicine and I just mentioned it because I thought this one was interesting that that the same exact things so choleric phlegmatic sanguine and melancholic that those have been overlapped with the myers-briggs personality test and so I don't know if you've ever taken that you know these kind of things but essentially this is

(1:28:15) like where you're gonna be either you know any of four qualities yes or no essentially on all of them so you're either an INTJ or an SFP whatever they all are they're intuitive versus you know introvert or they judging versus and whatever they all are yeah anyway and so though and and let's see I always whenever I've taken those I always I put a little star there to remember that I always get the result eat and TJ and which is right there or the little star there and I was also choleric so it works no but I bring

(1:28:54) it up because in fact so Michael Ferguson who was our neurologist who comes and guest lectures the Myers Briggs drives him totally nuts he's like because we have so many he says we have so many so much good neuroscience now that we could actually tell you know a lot of things about brain function personality and everything like that and his view of this particular tool is that it's about the same as the as the humors so anyway that's as view anyway so that's our little discussion on medieval science and sorcery

(1:29:30) [Applause] did we end up getting the folks in buried address yes oh good very hey well wait and welcome everybody from Barry here who were able to join us in any way at Barry centered place we really enjoy having you and hopefully you've enjoyed the experience on your end yes Valerie yeah I don't know if you covered this earlier in the lecture but I'm kind of surprised that what sounds like the popularity and acceptance of the astrological system of thinking in view in view of that this was you know in a very religious yeah you know strongly a

(1:30:17) Christian hegemonic time period um like earlier Greek science science you know sort of the atomistic sort especially since it was promoted by like Lucretius and and you know it was associated with hedonism and also determinism was rejected yeah because only God can determine outcomes and so I'm wondering how the idea that stars and constellations can determine outcomes squares with the idea that God is in control of everything you know the you know the Christian viewpoint or for that matter the the Muslim viewpoint and so

(1:30:58) you know it was as seen as a type of paganism or was it just so popular they couldn't stamp it out or no I I actually think it's that it gets integrated in so it's it's part it ends up being part of the Islam oh do do Christian world views which is that when they've decided that essentially that God the Creator is the you know the first cause the unmoved mover as Aristotle had it that in fact all of these kind of things this is this isn't unlike Adam ISM or something like that which contradicted the rest of the

(1:31:36) Italian systems this is integrated into it and so as a result of that the motion of the star and planetary bodies causing force at a distance and maybe prefiguring what's going to happen is just showing because god has made them all move and is what's causing all the celestial things to move in the first place all you're doing is using natural philosophy or natural science in order to get access to divine messages that you wouldn't otherwise have and since God has given us reason using your reason in order to you know

(1:32:11) get access to more of God's marvelous works and things like that is in the up and up so I think that occasionally people would you know there would be there would the churches often against all kinds of things you know and so but I mean it would be very I mean but the Pope's were often very very interested in their in astrology and they would have court astrologers too so in some sense it was a you know sometimes they would people would try to tank down on anything like that and same thing on alchemy too so on the one hand and

(1:32:42) outcome alchemy alchemists could do things and they would be court court natural philosophers and the in the in the course but sometimes then they're also accused of essentially being necromancer's and may be in league with with evil spirits and and and they may be even sometimes were doing stuff with spirits you know they would have been may be doing some of them are doing some kinds of conjuring although usually people usually people think of themselves as doing white magic when they're doing that and then in fact

(1:33:11) actually a lot of the magical rituals will be involving sort of Christian focused stuff where they're saying the Lord's Prayer or they're doing all kinds of different you know using the hosts in the communion and that kind of thing in order to do them kind of magic tricks and things or imagined or actually not only tricks they're trying to actually have yield these kind of results using sympathetic magic so I guess I would say that you know in that same sense you could also argue that the medical part you know the fact that physicians are

(1:33:38) are using essentially pagan science in order to try to right your humors that's up against the saints who are that using their their relics and their intercession is actually causing supernatural cures over at the Cathedral and so in that sense you may be you would also maybe be you know wanting to tank down on or stamp out essentially non you know physicians but in fact it's actually the it's actually the clerics that are doing all this stuff they're the ones that are reading Latin you know they're the ones

(1:34:15) that are giving birth to I mean the universities to science it is the church so all of this intellectual revolution and and you know recapturing of Greek science and philosophy is really happening you know in church circles I just wonder if there's a relationship again between east and west here because Vedic Astrology is you know an entire system again that's somewhat similar and it's the same thing with the humors looks a little bit like Ayurvedic the Indian system so yeah is it something like math that came from India via the

(1:35:01) in the Arabic and the Greek into Western and so I am not familiar enough with South Asian astrology I'm not I'm barely familiar frankly with Western astrology but with South Asian to tell you that transmission route but but certainly in the case of all of these things where we are dealing with something that has this almost total overlap between the Muslim and Christian worlds like you say the Muslim world is right next to those other worlds and so there's a pretty direct transmission line between China and Persia and there's a pretty direct

(1:35:37) transmission line between it's both the Arab world and the Persian world and India and so there's like you say what we call Arabic numerals come from India and but we got them from the Arabs so we call it Mara BRIC numerals you know and so in that sense since there's I'm pretty I some of these ideas maybe air coming from the Greeks and are actually making it all the way to India but some of them are some of ideas about about elements in general like idea that there's these kind of states air earth fire water and maybe spirit or are those

(1:36:10) kind things those are maybe also you could potentially argue that those are happening in separately in different places but same thing looking at stars and divination you know so they don't have to transmit but they could have Kevon shadow as you described there is a good continuation between the ancient philosophy and the medieval science yeah so the templates are based on the ancient philosophy as we might say for instance this idea of these fundamental elements yes so so it is maybe a compositional and then the alchemy the

(1:36:57) idea of alchemy is claims it's also the compositional way so if it is a compositional then it should be decompositional so yes we might be able to recompose yeah but I what I wonder is is there some kind of maybe a spark maybe a vague idea of this this fundamentals and the composition so this framework doesn't apply to human and human body when we when we talk about for instance this the analogies these I don't know how you called it this black one and the yellow one the black fire but yeah so they're not fundamental

(1:37:45) elements so they are some elements but right they have the analogy but they're not the composing blocks that's right yeah cuz the but cuz the blocks are still gonna be air earth fire in water yeah instead it's the idea like you say of each of the bile has essentially a governing property in that same way that like a constellation is a fire sign but is not the element right because everything in the heavens is ether including the including all the constellations but they are somehow because of the system there they are

(1:38:19) associated with the each element as an Associated quality like the bile is say it's not bile is not fire or I mean blood is not fire as you know that it's associated with but it's but it's somehow that's its element is its governing property yeah but then the decomposition [Music] concept disappears at that so what I'm trying to get into is that the idea that one metal could transform into another decomposition doesn't apply to for instance life and the species and we are going to see this idea way later so so

(1:39:09) well maybe I don't know any species could transform into other because there is this fundamental maybe blocks yeah why that idea doesn't is it well by the way it doesn't it Peter ever seen I haven't seen her art makes that argument he says you can't do transmutation because of this right so I mean so heat and he's the best alchemists you know so it's it's the other guys and that would be a probably a good argument that you could have added on to I mean we essentially have a Cena was saying you can't go between species this

(1:39:48) transmutation doesn't actually happen and so so so this really is the Philosopher's Stone you know is not just a Harry Potter novel it's also you know a fool's errand as far as like them were you know you know the the thoughtful astrologer I'm serious alchemists would have been because like you're saying it doesn't make a lot of sense that you could do that since you can't do that with with with physical or with a living matter right like you say you can't do a couple of procedures and if you feed if you feed like on as some kind of

(1:40:20) different diet you only feed oats to somebody they're not gonna suddenly turn into a horse you know but because that's not part that's not in their nature you know right so that's a good a good argument against transmutation will do valeria then Elizabeth yeah with regards to what the new acquaintance of year the neurologist was saying and that you know that tests like the you know sort of a personality type economies like yeah that arrived at by the Myers Brigg you know where there's four basic types of personality and

(1:41:00) there are other you know personality taxonomy is like personality psychology has many schools of thought but they tend to kind of hover around you know what would seem to be marked you know sort of stable personality traits and the Myers Brigg you know might be one example of you know four sets of stable personality traits now the neuro chemists and neurologists you know deal with kind of the Lego of what makes up the bits that make up you know various you know sort of manifestations of behavior and personality but the

(1:41:40) geneticists are doing something different and what has been ascertained and they're working on now that the human genome has been revealed yeah when observation is that some people have a gene that it has a variant from what's called short to long and it's kind of technical to say why short and long I think it's the a PEO for gene okay but if you have the long version you're gonna tend to be kind of a calm more person more kind of upbeat what sometimes called resilient under conditions of adversity they're the kind

(1:42:24) of people that when they were babies they didn't cry a lot if you're born with the short version like and there's an in-between but if you're born with a short you tend to be a little more delicate a little more anxious you know cry a lot as a baby kind of hard to soothe tend not to feel sort of like have as good a reaction to adversity yeah and if you have heavy heavy adversity in life like you know abusive childhood extreme poverty sort of dangerous neighborhood whatever the outcomes can be very Grievous and so

(1:42:55) that's already been determined that that can happen and that applies to a lot of people and they're working on another one so even though you know neural chemicals make that goal so to speak but there are these larger groupings but the geneticists are coming up with the kind look like the older personality divisions you've found the genetic component to Sanguinetti and melancholia yeah and choleric and everything like that yeah so well I guess I'm I just I just I just relate that Michael gets real cringy and angry when we talk about

(1:43:31) myers-briggs and what he comes here we'll get him - we'll get him to explain it in based on you know like also like you say because I'm sure he's also very interested in the genetic component - so that'll be really interesting when he's here and Elizabeth will we'll have this be the final I guess so I've just been reading a book called invisible the dangerous allure of the unseen and most of it it's about the influence on scientists and certainly up through the 19th and early 20th century of myth and magic and so on it's really about the

(1:44:13) need humans have to make sense of the world and if they aren't actually able to make sense of the world if there are things you can't see and you can't make sense of you fill it in with what you've got and as for alchemy I remember seeing an ad someplace in it I think a health food magazine for some supplement that was silicon but if you ingested it it would turn into calcium and strengthen your bones I'm not a chemist I'm a Potter I know that silicon that's a turn it's a calcium all right well thank you very

(1:44:57) much and thank you all of you and thanks everybody for joining us online remember next week we're going to talk about the old Saxon Genesis and I guess well swap places with Leandro if he comes back