Teeth
Cidu Bill on Nov 3rd 2009
Okay, you know, I wondered the same thing when I first heard this — and almost half a century later, I’m still with Ruthie.
Filed in Aristotle, Bill Bickel, One Big Happy, comic strips, comics, humor, teeth | 20 responses so far
Aarif Nov 3rd 2009 at 01:38 pm 1
Probably because Aristotle was a philosopher, not a scientist.
Frosted Donut Nov 3rd 2009 at 01:54 pm 2
And, in particular, Aristotle believed that you could figure everything out by thinking about it. Experimentation didn’t arrive until much (much) later, giving birth to modern science.
Looking inside somebody’s mouth to decide the issue is an experiment. Aristotle’s preferred method was to ponder it and come to the logical conclusion.
JohnD Nov 3rd 2009 at 01:54 pm 3
Well Oral Hygiene wasn’t the greatest back then. Mrs Aristotle, or any other women he might of checked, could have been missing several teeth from decay.
paperboy Nov 3rd 2009 at 01:59 pm 4
Perhaps he was speaking metaphorically.
Tim O'Shenko Nov 3rd 2009 at 02:09 pm 5
JohnD: Actually, tooth decay was far less common in ancient Greece - and even all the way through Medieval times - since sugary sweets were very rare. If our modern diet didn’t include such high concentrations of sugar, chocolate, and corn syrup, our teeth & gums wouldn’t rot nearly as fast as they do.
Pirk Nov 3rd 2009 at 02:35 pm 6
the problem was probably that he did look in just one woman’s (such as Mrs. Aristotle’s) mouth
Rebecca Nov 3rd 2009 at 03:42 pm 7
Aristotle, like most philosophers in history, was an unmarried man. Maybe he didn’t know any ladies.
DPWally Nov 3rd 2009 at 03:45 pm 8
Was it necessary to add “mistakenly”?
And why “It was originally”? That implies there’s a current school of thought that women have fewer teeth, and he just saw an article tracing that thought to Aristotle.
Too many counterproductive words.
furrykef Nov 3rd 2009 at 05:15 pm 9
Huh, I’d never heard of this myth until now.
DPWally - well, the “originally” isn’t as superfluous as it may seem. If you take it out, it may sound like Aristotle and only Aristotle held that belief. (”Who was that one guy who believed women had fewer teeth? Oh yeah, it was Aristotle.”) Adding “originally” makes it clear that the belief spread from there, even if it isn’t still extant.
“Mistakenly” is more dubious, but it still makes it unambiguous that no, women don’t have a different number of teeth, just in case somebody out there might think otherwise. (But the punch line makes that pretty clear anyway.)
And, finally, many people just fail to heed William Strunk Jr.’s advice to “omit needless words”, especially in spoken dialogue. (Heck, I could have eliminated “just” in the preceding sentence, for example.)
- Kef
Naomi Nov 3rd 2009 at 07:10 pm 10
I remember reading an old adage saying that every baby is another tooth - in other
words, women lost a tooth with every pregnancy due to calcium deficiency, back when
malnutrition was more common and not as well understood. So, perhaps in Aristotle’s
time, many adult women actually had fewer teeth than adult men? Although in truth I
think Aarif and Frosted Donut had the most relevant answers.
Mitch4 Nov 3rd 2009 at 07:16 pm 11
And to make up for the tooth disparity, women have one more rib than men. This came about because Adam had one extracted, from which Eve was grown, … right?
Charlene Nov 3rd 2009 at 09:25 pm 12
Not true at all, Tim O’Shenko. It’s a modern theory (usually spread by fact-hating quacks) that everyone in the old days had perfect teeth because they didn’t eat those eeeevil refined sugars. Nonsense: most cultures partook freely of natural sweeteners like honey and syrups, and they had as many dental problems as we have. One of the major causes of death among the ancient Egyptians was tooth decay from sugar consumption - the mummies that have been catalogued prove that. We don’t have a lot of Roman remains (they burned their dead), but the ones we have don’t have good teeth either.
Bacteria don’t care what type of sugar you eat: it’s all food to them.
Seth Finkelstein Nov 3rd 2009 at 10:13 pm 13
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/history/aristotle_wisdom_teeth.html
“Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine; in the case of other animals observations have not yet been made: but the more teeth they have the more long-lived are they, as a rule, while those are short-lived in proportion that have teeth fewer in number and thinly set.”
It appears he did do observation - maybe it was indeed dental problems which caused him to make a false generalization.
zbicyclist Nov 3rd 2009 at 10:20 pm 14
I think Pirk (#6) may have it right. People don’t have the same number of teeth. My father had all 4 wisdom teeth. My mother had none. I have 2 (upper) but nothing lower.
Aristotle clearly wasn’t into empirical investigation, but did he actually do none?
Stan Nov 4th 2009 at 01:17 am 15
I’m surprised at Aristotle’s inaccuracy. I mean, as a philosopher, wasn’t he obsessed with the search for the tooth?
mkilby Nov 4th 2009 at 05:03 am 16
@ Rebecca (7) - I can’t imagine that any woman could be so starry-eyed that she would be willing to live with such an ivory-tower theoretician, even given the prospect of becoming famous as “Mrs. Aristotle”.
@ Naomi (10) - the “dental” idea is very plausible, although it’s hard to imagine a way that it could be verified at this point. The problem still exists today (it’s not just diet, hormone imbalances during pregnancy can lead to tooth loss, too). One grandmother of mine (with 5 kids) had full dentures before she was 30.
@ Charlene (12) - The primary dental problem that the ancient Egyptians had was their habit of using grit as an additive to assist in grinding grain. (Egyptian art never shows a person smiling, possibly because they all had rotten teeth.) Sweeteners (such as honey) were an expensive luxury, but chewing on coarse bread with remnants of sand in it was an excellent way for everyone (especially the poor) to ruin their teeth. Later, the introduction of a softer variety of grain eliminated the need for the sand in grinding.
Soup Dragon Nov 4th 2009 at 08:40 am 17
Actually, Aristotle was one of the first philosophers who did systematic observations of the natural world. Obviously, many of his results and interpretations have been proven wrong in more recent years, but he was certainly more of a scientist type than an ivory-tower theoretician.
Consider Raphaels “The School of Athens” ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Sanzio_01.jpg ), Plato and Aristotle in the centre. Plato is pointing up to the heavens, the ideas. Aristotle is gesturing out to the observable world.
And by the way, he was married.
Nebulous Nov 4th 2009 at 10:36 am 18
The size of the experimental sample can cause these mistakes.
I have proof that women have more teeth than men.
My sister had 6 wisdom teeth removed, I only had 4. QED
mkilby Nov 4th 2009 at 11:04 am 19
@ Soup Dragon - hmmm. You’re quite right, he did tie the knot, but still, that doesn’t seem to be the kind of married life that most women would strive for. Nevertheless, he did ask to be buried next to her, that says something (read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle for more info than you probably want to know).
Rammy M Nov 4th 2009 at 01:52 pm 20
@Stan
Lol
I wasn’t expecting that, which made it that much funnier