[Avodah] Do gentiles have more teeth than Jews? Do they have less?

[Prof. Levine]

At 02:31 PM 2/16/2010, Micha wrote:

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 01:15:59PM -0500, Yitzchok Levine wrote:
: From
: http://parsha.blogspot.com/2009/06/do-gentiles-have-more-teeth-than-jews.html
:
: There is a famous position of Aristotle.
: Why have men more teeth than women?
: By reason of the abundance of heat and blood which is more in men
: than in women.
: -- "<http://www.exclassics.com/arist/arist37.htm>Of the Teeth.", Aristotle

: And the following from Bertrand Russell:
: Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although
: he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this
: statement by examining his wives' mouths.
: <http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Bertrand_Russell/>Bertrand
: Russell, Impact of Science on Society (1952) ch. 1
: British author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 - 1970)

How many people had a full set of teeth. And of those who did, would
Aristotle know they did? And given where money would be spent by Greeks
of his period, I would bet far more men had more teeth than women.

It is thus unlike the verifiability of:
: As someone noted in a comment recently, Rav Kanievsky similarly
: believes that Jews differ physically from gentiles in the number of
: teeth, on the basis of a midrash Talpiyot combined with another
: rabbi's testimony. Midrash Talpiyot was authored by Rabbi Eliyahu ben
: Shlomo Avraham, and was published in 1698

But if Medras Talpiot is a true medrash, the 33rd tooth it ascribes to
nakhriim is not talking about dentition.

BTW, we discussed this back in Nov 2001.
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/getindex.cgi?section=T#TALMUD%20AND%20SCIENCE


>There the primary topic was 8th month babies, and I wrote:
>: On Thu, Nov 01, 2001 at 01:29:06PM -0500, Gil Student wrote:
>...
>:: However, this is generally an observable phenomenon. Could Chazal not
>:: have observed whether this was true or not?
>
>: Quite possibly not. The experimental method was not invented yet.
>: Infant mortality was high, I am sure it was higher for 8th and 7th month
>: babies. But until someone actually sits down and collects statistics,
>: it is quite possible no one noticed that 8th month babies are more
>: likely to survive than 7th.

All of this may indeed be true. However, what does it say about 
someone alive today who is either unaware of or refuses to accept the 
experimental method? The end of the post at

The end of the post at 
http://parsha.blogspot.com/2009/06/do-gentiles-have-more-teeth-than-jews.html 
says,

"But how can they [the gedolei Yiaroel] really judge this, when they 
likely would not recognize all the places that Chazal's statements 
diverge from science, and quite possibly are not familiar with all 
the relevant sources, not really caring that much about the 
intersection until it becomes a hot-button issue? And should someone 
who does care about the issue, and has studied the various shittos 
deeply, and does have a better sense of just where Chazal seem to 
contradict science, be mevatel his daas to those who don't consider 
science important and therefore are not necessarily in a better 
position to draw an objective conclusion?

Let me add that I would not be putting this forth, which could be 
seen ch"v as an attack, and an attack on elu ve'elu, if not for the 
fact that others are declaring that it forbidden to differ from the 
chareidi gedolim on issues pertaining to the intersection of Torah 
and science."


YL
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