There is a persistent rumor, perpetuated primarily by historians of astronomy, that G.W.F. Hegel provided a logical proof that there could only be seven planets in the solar system. This diabolical proof supposedly lurks within his 1801 doctoral dissertation. However, in the only section that could possibly contain such a claim, that entitled ‘De orbitis planetarum’, the proof is difficult to spot …
John Locke is rumoured to have confidently reported the existence of mermaids and seamen. It certainly appears so, according to this section from Book III of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding:
There are fishes that have wings, and are not strangers to the airy region: and there are some birds that are inhabitants of the water, whose blood is cold as fishes, and their flesh so like in taste that the scrupulous are allowed them on fish-days. There are animals so near of kin both to birds and beasts that they are in the middle between both: amphibious animals link the terrestrial and aquatic together; seals live at land and sea, and porpoises have the warm blood and entrails of a hog; not to mention what is confidently reported of mermaids, or sea-men …
It is widely believed that Pythagoras thought it was a bad idea to eat beans. As all his writings are lost, there is no direct evidence. However, the Pythagoreans by all reports followed the injunction, as Bertrand Russell reported, although he didn’t seem to take it all very seriously:
[Pythagoras] founded a religion on which the the main tenets were the transmigration of souls and the sinfulness of eating beans. His religion was embodied in a religious order, which, here and there, acquired rule of the state … But the unregenerate hankered after beans, and sooner or later rebelled.