To what ancient philosophy are you referring?
'Ancient' is a meme, just like 'natural' or 'eastern'.
The chair has been used since antiquity, although for many centuries it was a symbolic article of state and dignity rather than an article for ordinary use.[1]
This makes it seem like you ascribe some qualities to old ideas, because they are old. E.g. it's old, so it must have been tried many times and determined to be better than other ideas.
Just take your example: "Thousands years of experience, and yet medical practitioners wouldn't wash their hands less than two centuries ago." Well, I had some pretty religiously hardcore relatives. My Mum's uncle, who died at 95 in 1985 was such a hardcore brahmin that if the shadow of a lower caste person fell on his food it was discarded (given away actually). I found that enormously offensive, but at the same time I am fascinated that my longest-lived relatives were the ones who preserved ancient cleanliness rituals. The meat-eating, alcohol drinking ones all had heart attacks in their 60s.
Standard practice if you were sick (and upper class) in ancient Persia: have your servants bring you out into the street where you would ask folks if they'd ever seen those symptoms and what they did. And now "evidence based medicine" is a modern revolution?
Likewise, some of the Greek scholars had brain-damaged ideas, and some had good ideas that are irrelevant these days (like estimates of the diameter of the earth or the use of zero). But they also had good observations on life and human nature. And the opportunity for longitudinal observation.
I used to mourn that only 7 of Sophocles' 120 plays survived, but then I figured that they were probably the best 7. I suspect a lot of ancient crap has been discarded, and the density of cleverness per unit work is higher than the contemporary corpus. After all, nobody watches 99% of the movies from the 70s, just the good ones. Why shouldn't this be true from ancient thinking, when you have had so many years to winnow it down?
I didn't say anything about evidence based medicine being new, and in fact, I don't care whether something is old or new, I only care whether it is proven to work.
If researchers aren't investigating some old way of curing something, it's probably because no one thinks it's worthwhile. As a result, we may miss out on a lot of things, but it's still much better to only use well tested, proven methods than to trust random snake oil peddlers.
... I'd point out that barbarian scientist doctors did not wash their hands 200 years ago, but 2,000 years ago it was really old news for pious Jews, because their God had told them all about sanitazion.
They were probably too primitive to understand the germ theory of disease, but if a voice from above told them "if you don't do as I say, I will punish you", and then they observed that bad things happened when they failed to obey... they would have to be pretty stupid to keep breaking the rules.
Not saying that this literaly happened precisely as described. But the belief that Progress is a straight line from caveman to astronaut is no less a myth than the previous one. You just don't see it that way because older myths are not part of your culture's world view.
A very small percentage of this old knowledge is still "as best as we can do", I would guess. But we have made vast improvements on almost all segments of knowledge.
I'm fairly confident that bykovich was being sarcastic.
Ancient knowledge has played an important role in us reaching great heights, but we should eye it skeptically, and recognize the things we have learned since then.
I probably could have made that clearer in my post.
It's not a strawman argument if you don't mean what you say.
I mainly felt the sarcasm was over the top and uncharitable. Fortunately, some good discussion resulted in the follow-up comments, so perhaps it was actually well placed.
Of course it's "almost correct", and the theory had holes which we've gotten better at. But the old 'wrong' version gave people a good way to act when faced with limited knowledge.
In the diet arena, we are still very much faced with limited knowledge.
Can that even actually happen?
But of course we should judge practices by today's knowledge and evidence (though informed by a historical perspective).
Ancient techniques like crucification and pederasty and slavery and infanticide are, quite rightly, considered passé.
My main point was that we should
a) not look to ancient texts for profound insights. (Note that it's perfectly fine to read ancient texts for entertainment or research or the historical perspective.) Even philosophy has advanced over time.
b) not fall into the trap of ascribing some profound wisdom to ancient thinkers that (on no basis) happened to get something right, like Democritus and his atomic theory. Would you go to Democritus writings for advice on string theory or energy policy or climate change? If tomorrow it is found that the shrimps near Canton province are polluted with heavy metals, should we triumphantly open the bible and point to Leviticus, who admonished us that "And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you."
Look at all texts with skepticism and practice reflective equilibrium, sure. That includes all modern texts.
Needless to say, I am not conflating yoga and slavery, just highlighting that both were prevalent millennia ago, thus demonstrating that this fact alone is not strongly indicative of something being good.
Also this is an extension of the Jewish tradition of fasting on Tuesday/Thursday. AFAIK, the only reason the Church changed it was simply to distinguish themselves from the Jews during the height of the Judiazing heresey.
Funny that with all the wisdom you'd think a deity possessed, he made the deal pretty bad for those followers who live in the very northern latitudes and happen to be born in the wrong century. Not eating for an entire month (or even a week) is extreme in itself, but not drinking anything either is just impossible.
Or maybe Muslims were not intended to come and live here.. :-)
Not sure if you're just trolling or being a typical reddit atheist jackass, but Muslims have adapted Ramadan at latitudes that the sun never rises (or sets) by using the times of a city or country where there's a clear and distinguishable difference between day and night. Not only that, but the entire point of fasting isn't the exact time that one is fasting, but the meaning behind it.
I'm not even a Muslim, but playing these kinds of logical "gotchas" with religious texts that were written centuries ago is just dumb.
I live in Seattle; being decently north, the Ramadan fasts are long in the summer (~18 hours) and super short in the winter (~10.5 hours). These days, Ramadan falls around June so the fasts are long but in ~16.5 years they'll be short again. Another factor to take into account: the further north/south you are, the milder the summers tend to be, so fasting is a cakewalk compared to what Muhammad and his followers had to deal with. I'll take an 18-hour fast in mild Seattle weather to a 15-hour fast in the deserts of Arabia any day.
Even today, Muslim farmers work in the baking heat of an equatorial sun while fasting during Ramadan. And these folks aren't sitting in air-conditioned tractors; they're working the fields by hand, far too poor to afford the machinery considered standard by farmers in the developed world. And before you get worried, those who are too old or sick to fast are excused from it.
Anyways, I'm not attacking you. I can understand how impossible it must seem to someone who isn't Muslim. But it really isn't that difficult, especially if your job consists of sitting in a comfy chair in a climate-controlled classroom/office. We have lots of non-Muslims who fast with us from time to time during Ramadan; give it a try and I think you'll be surprised with what you can do when you put your mind to it.