Vayikra Rabbah (04:04) Ten things serve the soul: The gullet for food, the wind-pipe for the voice, the liver for anger, the lungs for drinking, the intestines to grind the food, the spleen for laughter, the stomach for sleep, the gall for jealousy, the kidneys think out and the heart decides; and the soul is above them all G-d, says to the soul: ' I have made thee superior to all of them, and yet thou goest forth and committest robbery and violence, and sinnest!
Pesachim (94b) The Sages of Israel maintain: The sun travels beneath the sky by day and above the sky at night; while the Sages of the nations of the world maintain: It travels beneath the sky by day and below the earth at night. Said Rabbi: And their view is preferable to ours, for the wells are cold by day but warm at night.
Chasam Sofer (Nidah 18a): What are the meanings of the anatomical terms mentioned in this Mishna? After I researched medical books and medical writers as well as scholars and surgical texts, I have concluded that we cannot deny the fact that reality is not as described by Rashi, Tosfos and the drawings of the Maharam of Lublin. We have only what the Rambam wrote in the Mishna Torah and his Commentary to the Mishna - even though the latter has statements which are unclear. However, you will find correct drawings in the book Maaseh Tuviah and Shevili Emuna…. Therefore, I did not bother at all with the commentaries of Rashi and Tosfos in this matter since it is impossible to match them with true reality. You should know this.
Shulchan Aruch (E. H. 156:4): A women is not exempt from yibum or chalitza until she gives birth to a child who completed 9 months of pregnancy Rema: Some say that in modern times an 8 month baby is also viable even though the gemora specifically rejects this possibility. The fact is that many have expressed amazement at this ruling of the gemora because our experience contradicts it. Therefore we must say that nature has changed from the time of the gemora in this matter and so it is with a number of other issues (Beis Yosef quoting the Tashbatz)…
Rema - nature has changed? Perhaps medical science improved in 1500 years between chazal and the rema.
ReplyDeleteOr empirical observations of chazal in bavel represent things there.
Even today in Iraq , there's higher child mortality than in Europe.
Nature hasn't changed. It says so in Tehillim "Choq nasan v'lo ya'avor".
DeleteWhat's happened is that we've changed the environment. Think of it this way. You have a cup of coffee. Now add sugar. The driink is sweeter but the coffee hasn't changed. It's all the sugar.
We live in an environmental saturated with toxic material. We use electricity to ignore our biological clocks and natural rhythms. If we are living differently than our ancesotrs it's not because nature has changed but because our environment has, the sugar in the coffee as it were.
There is also the matter of the scientific method. When the Chasam Sofer read medical and science books, they were based on the limited understandings of the time and the lack of scientific method. That's why we have debates over the size of olives and why we're stuck with the halakha following the authority who probably never saw an olive in his life but didn't let that stop him from deciding how big it was.