Humanity has come a long way from its humble cave roots hundreds of thousands of years ago. We owe our advancement to the curiosity of many intelligent men and women who dared to ask questions and challenge facts that could have gotten them arrested or even worse. As time moved, many brilliant people brought incredible theories that challenged the status quo, and these ideas became indisputable truths for decades, even centuries, and, in rare cases, millennia.
Unfortunately, the constant progress of science has relegated many truths to the bin of fallacies and pseudoscience. Today, we will dive into the past and show you 15 former facts that are no longer facts. So, relax and enjoy the ride.
Disproven Facts About the Solar System
Since humanity discovered the gift of sight, it has always looked up to the sky and wondered what rests beyond the clouds. For millennia, intelligent people have created theories about the solar system and our planet’s role in the grand scheme.
Some of these theories became facts, making contrary ideas false and, in some cases, heresy. However, modern science and technology proved these unchangeable facts were false and misleading.
Here are some prominent theories about the solar system that are now defunct:
1. The Earth’s Flatness
Modern Homo sapiens walked on the surface of the Earth as early as 300,000 years ago. However, in almost all this long and brutal history of surviving multiple predators, no one thought to disprove a theory that has so much weight: the flatness of the Earth.
The Earth’s flatness was a deep-rooted belief that stemmed across multiple cultures in the ancient world. Many people had varying beliefs concerning the planet’s shape, from those who thought there was a physical edge of existence to others who believed the world was a disc.
It wasn’t until about the 3rd century BC that mathematicians calculated the circumference of the Earth. By the 5th century BC, the shape of the Earth was undoubtedly a sphere. For those wondering how ancient that was, it’s about 2500 years ago.
2. The Earth’s Age
If people thought our planet was flat, beliefs about its age shouldn’t shock anyone.
The Ussher chronology is a 17th-century chronology written by the Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher. He stated that after meticulously reading the Bible, the age of the Earth was around 6000 years.
The Church of England adopted Ussher’s work as fact. They added the chronology to the official bible, and for many years, much of the Western world believed the Earth was 6000 years old.
It wasn’t until the 19th century that many people disproved Ussher’s idea and relegated it to the dustbin of history.
With the help of carbon dating techniques and advanced calculations, we know that the Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. That means James was off by 4,999,994,000 years.
3. The Moon’s Shape
It’s no surprise that many people in ancient times had varying beliefs relating to the moon. The ancient Egyptians worshipped and saw it as a symbol of fertility, while others thought it could make one go crazy.
However, though all these beliefs were disproven, some were so hard to change because of their fact status.
When an astronomer named Galileo Galilei pointed his new invention, a telescope, towards the moon and showed the catholic church that the celestial body was not a perfect sphere but one with rough edges, everything went boom.
The church, which had maintained the geocentric view of the world, stated Galileo’s evidence was false and heretic and sentenced him to house imprisonment for life. They believed his ideas contradicted God’s creation and wanted his punishment to serve as a deterrent to those who wanted to explore heavenly bodies.
However, Galileo’s ideas proved factually accurate centuries later. On October 31, 1992, Pope John Paul II formally apologized, on behalf of the church, for punishing Galileo for his breakthrough discovery.
4. The Geocentric Ideology
Before humans started believing the sun was a massive spinning fusion reactor, they were busy thinking the Earth was the center of the solar system.
The geocentric model stated that all planets were perfectly spherical and orbited the Earth, which was a stable body; this belief stemmed from people attaching too much value to the worth of humanity.
The geocentric model lasted for thousands of years in the Western world and was only changed when the mathematician and catholic clergy, Nicolaus Copernicus, presented the heliocentric model (which had existed for long), which stated the Earth and planets revolved around the sun.
5. Planet Sun
Besides believing the Earth was the center of the universe, ancient people believed the sun and moon were planets. According to the ancient world, the planets in the sky were the Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. It took remarkable scientists like Galileo to disprove this long-standing fact.
Disproven Biology Facts
Before the world grew accustomed to the principles of evolution, reproduction, microbiology, and respiration, many fallacies stood as indisputable facts.
Some of them are:
6. Evolution Theory
Before Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published their journal on evolution theory, humanity had a strange view of the history of its beginning.
Many people believed in creationism, which stated that God created all living beings that are stable; this idea fit perfectly into every belief system as no one could have observed the gradual change of species due to adaptation and evolution.
For thousands of years, creationism was the dominant fact of the world, and no one could alter it until scientists poked holes and proved the world was much older than creationism stated.
7. Chromosome Count
After the overwhelming success of evolution theory, biologists began peering into the human body to determine what it holds. After chromosomes came to light, many scientists raced to learn how many humans have.
In the 1920s, a breakthrough occurred, as an American Zoologist, Theophilus Painter, published his findings, which stated humans have 48 chromosomes.
For the next thirty years, the chromosome count for humans was an indisputable fact. However, all that changed in April 1956, when J-H Tjio and A Levan at the University of Lund in Sweden discovered the correct figure was 46.
8. Lamarckism
Before Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution, another scientist, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, proposed an idea that would serve as the foundation for evolutionary biology. He stated that the physical characteristics of an organism achieved throughout its lifetime could move to offspring; this idea meant that a bodybuilder could give birth to a child with enhanced muscles.
Throughout the 19th century, Lamarckism was a fact. However, with the advancement in genetics, Lamarckism was proven false.
9. The Four Humors Theory
Before people realized that health relied on many environmental and dietary factors, there was a leading fact concerning one’s well-being.
The four humors theory, developed by ancient Greek Philosophers, stated that good health relied on four bodily fluids being in equilibrium. The fluids were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.
For many centuries, people believed this idea to be an indisputable fact. However, medicine and microbiology advancements showed that good health relies on factors like nutrition, resistance to pathogens, and hygiene.
10. The Miasma Theory
Like the four humors theory, the miasma theory states bad air originating from rotting corpses causes diseases.
Though the theory proved true because hygiene prevented diseases, it was a flawed idea that was eventually disproven by the advent of microbiology, which showed tiny organisms called germs caused diseases.
Disproven Facts in Physical Sciences
The physical sciences have always advanced through numerous ideas thought to be factual; these leaps were only possible through the creation of peer-to-peer review, which had scientists rigorously test theories for fallacies. Some former ideas thought to be fact include:
11. The Four Fundamental Elements
Before the discovery of the periodic table, ancient philosophers believed that the universe comprised four fundamental elements: air, water, fire, and earth.
Empedocles proposed the theory and convinced his peers about the fundamental forces.
The four classical elements became fact throughout medieval and even modern times until scientists discovered smaller substances that made up the four classical elements.
12. Gravity
The science community exploded when Isaac Newton came up with the laws of gravitation. The formulas were so accurate that they could predict the motion of planetary bodies in space. For many years, scientists saw gravity as a force of attraction between bodies.
However, everything changed when Einstein introduced the theory of relativity.
Einstein’s theory destroyed the previous ideas of gravity and showed that it exists because of the curvature of space-time.
Einstein’s theory radicalized physics and pushed humanity into a new age of enlightenment.
13. The Atom’s Divisibility
After the atom’s discovery, many scientists thought it was the tiniest anything could go.
For many decades, it was a fact that atoms were the smallest and most indivisible parts of matter. However, all that changed when Ernest Rutherford used radioactive beta particles to split an atom.
With Rutherford’s experiment, the long-held idea of the atom’s indivisibility shattered, paving the way for a new field called particle physics.
Disproven Sex Facts
Many societies avoid talking about sex like the plague. Because of this connotation, many theories and myths about it stayed in history as fact. However, with scientific advancement, many have been disproven. Some of these former facts include:
14. Sperm Cells Being Parasites
When Anton van Leeuwenhoek pointed his microscope at a semen sample, he observed tiny organisms swimming. Shocked, he called the organisms spermatozoa, meaning sperm animals.
Anton initially believed that sperm cells were parasites. His idea remained for years until scientists studied embryonic development in sea urchin eggs and learned the importance of sperm cells in reproduction.
15. One Sex Theory
Before people accepted that men and women were different, some philosophers like Aristotle came up with the idea that both male and female organs were identical, except for the womb; this idea lingered for years until scientists disproved it and showed that men and women possess different organs.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed learning these disproven facts. You can check our article on Platypuses. You can also search our Facts Database. Don’t forget to leave your comments and share.
