I don't think one should give any credence to those ancient theories. Greek philosopher Democritus came up with the theory of atoms, but it was a lucky guess without any evidence at the time.
100 years ago there were people who still believed in the miasma theory of disease. The scope of human understanding of physiology and nutrition was straight up garbage before the modern era.
I'm not sure this is a real counterpoint: with no microscopes or tools, they figured out airborne infections and learned to stay away from dead and rotting things, as well as gases emitted by those who were sick (the same way we're not walking around inhaling peoples' coughs).
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.
That compounded experience was not useless garbage, it directly led us to our far more informed state today.
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.
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.
Fair enough, my use of the term strawman doesn't really work.
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.
That's an easy and lazy characterization. Sure, there have been a lot of dumb theories, but there are plenty today as well (anti-vaxxers, for example). But folks 3500 years ago (or 100,000) were just as smart as the folks today, they just lacked a lot of tools we have. But some of their observations are apposite.
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?
Your relatives living longer doesn't prove anything though. They might have lived longer by chance.
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.
We know how to conduct experiments properly now, so there is no excuse for simply believing something when you could try and see if and how well it works.
All he is saying, and this is a good point, is that the long time use of something isn't indicative of it being good for you. Going to church has been around for 2000 years too, that doesn't mean that it's healthy, it's just something people do.
Funny that you would bring up chairs. Originally, other pieces of furniture were used for sitting.
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]
I see the point, but your example is unfortunate. It turns out it is healthy/protective to go to church (and thus have a large support system) in both the current research and the earlier research that under-reported atheists/non-theists.
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.
So what of the modern illumination of the health benefits of ancient techniques like meditation and yoga? You're saying don't practice until we're 100% sure they're beneficial?
Not everything that was done thousands of years ago is bad, like for example eating and sleeping and exercise.
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."
I chose these simple, extreme examples to avoid being misunderstood again, because you brought up a complete straw man ("You're saying don't practice until we're 100% sure they're beneficial?") when I said nothing of that sort, so I assumed you might have a certain proclivity for misunderstanding things. Looks like I was right.
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.
If you look hard enough and squint a little you can always find some ancient philosopher or physician whose writings appear to support whatever you want. But it's just meaningless confirmation bias. People are seeing what they want to see.
Orthodox Christians also fast two days a week (Wednesday & Friday) most weeks of the year, and for a number of other times, totalling about half the year.
[0] http://www.yogamag.net/archives/1981/emay81/hindu.shtml