Bertrand Russell's Teapot

...or at calendas Graecus (the Greek calends), which was a joke to all Romans; basically meaning "just as soon as Hell freezes over". Romans all knew that the Greeks never have a calends (it's a Latin word, meaning the initial day of each Roman month, from which the English word calendar derives). But he did explain the teapot which Bertrand Russell infamously claims is somewhere out there circling the sun, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, amid the asteroids of the Van Allen Belt. In the academic fields of philosophy and logic this object is universally known as Russell’s Teapot, and academics study how Bertrand Russell challenged his students to argue the impossibility of its existence. Russell's position was that the possibility of the teapot actually existing could not be disproven (along with all other insular propositions which Russell found to be similar).
 
Since Russell's time, Russell's Teapot has been popular among academics. Academics always get a few extra serial erudition points for mentioning Russell's Teapot in any conversation or lecture.
 
Russell’s Mistake on the other hand, defines a common philosophical error. It critiques how the scope of human knowledge often gets stretched beyond the pale of reason, especially in our post-diluvian milieu of widespread scientism. This epistemological overstep was described by Russell, recounting an old lady who had the...