Sandwalk: Friday the 13th

Friday, June 13, 2008

Friday the 13th

Friday's Urban Legend: FALSE

[reposted from April 13, 2007]

Having a morbid fear of Friday the 13th—paraskevidekatriaphobics—is one of the most widespread superstitious beliefs in western industrialized nations. Believe it or not, there are many people who refuse to leave their house on Friday the 13th because they fear that bad luck will befall them if they venture outside. (Apparently, the bad luck doesn't find them in their homes.)

Personally, I like the attitude of the "eccentric" (rational?) men in the photo.

Members of the Eccentric Club of London at their annual Friday the 13th lunch in 1936 – surrounded by objects that are connected with superstitions. Picture: Getty Images [Unlucky roots of Friday the 13th].

There is no evidence to support the irrational fear of Friday the 13th, with the single exception of a study published 14 years ago in the British Medical Journal [Is Friday the 13th bad for your health?]. That study showed an increase in accidents on Friday the 13th compared to Friday the 6th.

According to scholars, the fear of Friday the 13th is a recent invention. There is no mention of it before 1900 [Why Friday the 13th Is Unlucky]. It seems that people simply combined a fear of the number 13—triskaidekaphobia—with an obscure dead of Fridays. Nobody knows for sure why the number 13 is considered unlucky but there are several popular myths. The most common are a Norse myth about having 13 people at dinner and a Christian myth about the Last Supper.

There is no significant historical record documenting a widespread irrational fear of Fridays although there are plenty of minor examples of Friday avoidance. Some people thought it was bad luck to be married on a Friday or to set sail on a ship. In Christian cultures the day is associated with the fact that Jesus was crucified on a Friday and Friday is the day that Adam was tempted by Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.

5 comments :

Anonymous said...: The fear of Friday 13th is incredibly silly. You can fear the movie of that name, and its sequels, because they're all so bad, but don't worry about that day.

On a different note : if I were you, I wouldn't trust Saturday 14th. It's definitely a bad luck day.; Friday, June 13, 2008 8:31:00 AM
Anonymous said...: I would recommend a book by one Nicholas Lachenmeyer: 13: A history of the World's Most Popular Superstition. I read it a few years ago. Apparently the US used to have a few clubs similar to the one in your picture. They would get together occasionally to flaunt every superstition they could think of, such as holding dinners on Friday the 13th, sitting 13 people to a table, having black cats walking around, and so on.

Large chains such as Barnes and Noble and Borders don't seem to stock the book, unfortunately. Borders didn't even have it in their system. I was lucky that my local library system had a copy in circulation.; Friday, June 13, 2008 12:20:00 PM
James Goetz said...: I refuse to jump out of a 13th story window on any given Friday the 13th.; Friday, June 13, 2008 1:40:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Oh dear ....

There is a VERY GOOD reason why that date was "unlucky for some"

Friday 13th October 1307
The arrest of all Knights Templar in France.

That is where the superstition comes from ......; Friday, June 20, 2008 8:56:00 AM
Larry Moran said...: G. Tingey writes,

Friday 13th October 1307. The arrest of all Knights Templar in France.

There are many possible explanations for the fear of Friday the 13th but that one is almost certainly false.

If you had followed the links in my posting you would have discovered why. There is no record of any fear of Friday the 13th before 1800. By all historical accounts, it appears to be a modern phenomenon.

If it had anything to do with the event of 1307 then why is there no mention of it for 500 years? Besides, even though the destruction of the Knights Templar gets a mention in the history books, it was not that big a deal for the average person back in 1307. In fact, many people thought it was a good thing. Friday the 13th should be a lucky day.; Friday, June 20, 2008 10:33:00 AM

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The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

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The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

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My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

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Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

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Friday, June 13, 2008

Friday the 13th

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