Concept Summary       Chapter 4

If evolution has shaped us, so have the thoughts of others who have come before us. Western culture and its principal analytic tool, science, have presupposed that the universe is a rational, harmonious place with an internal order, knowable by human beings through a process of open inquiry and critical evaluation of competing ideas. With a childlike wonder, the ancient Greeks were the intellectual source of such thoughts and the idea that happiness can involve seeking knowledge for its own sake.

Because such a view of life is open-ended and necessitates a philosophical insecurity, its acceptance is often punctuated by views that involve less risk. One reaction to the philosophy of the ancient Greeks was that of Protagoras and the sophists. For Protagoras, open-endedness to the process of seeking knowledge implies a lack of certainty, and lack of certainty implies a lack of knowledge. Hence we do not discover truth, we make it. Each of us is the measure of reality; each of us molds reality from a particular perspective. Everything is relative, and the wise man or woman learns that the game of life does not involve uncovering an objective truth that is already there for all to see, but instead an expansion of a perspective by persuading others to live in that perspective. Truth is a myth, and if persuasion, in a given situation, is ineffective, conformity to the prevailing viewpoint is a diplomatic alternative.

Socrates saw such a view as stimulating and sobering, but ultimately questionable, because it implied that any way of life was conceivably good. There must be universal truths and standards, thought Socrates, otherwise there would be no way to distinguish good ways of living from bad ones. Protagoras is correct, however, according to Socrates, in that as individuals we are not only limited -- perceiving the world from our own cage of appearances -- but also we fail to acknowledge the ignorance of our limited perspectives. Most often, when challenged, we fall back on modes of reasoning (authority, popularity, and tradition) that are actually excuses not to think. Truth exits but it is indeed difficult to obtain, according to Socrates. This is all the more reason we must acknowledge our personal limitations and share our thoughts critically with others.

Plato, a student of Socrates, dedicated his intellectual life to the ideals inherent in Socratic philosophy. Penetrating the problem of knowledge at a deeper level, Plato concluded that the challenge offered by Protagoras was insurmountable unless standards and truths could be found that were "self-evident." Plato thought he saw the key to the whole problem in the essence of a mathematical truth. Mathematical truths seem to be durable principles that remain true regardless of what happens in the physical world; our learning of these principles may be stimulated by our interaction with the physical world, but their self-evident truth is ultimately realized intellectually. At some point we just know that 2+2=4 cannot be false.

This premise led Plato to the conclusion that beliefs about the physical world, even our most successful ones, could be no more than practical, approximate statements, and thus he agreed with Protagoras that a science of the physical world could never constitute true knowledge. But because truth and knowledge must exist, this in turn led Plato to believe in another realm of existence -- a realm of pure thought comprehendible by the human mind, a realm of true Being distinct from the shadowy, changing world of physical appearances.

Although Plato's legacy is great, especially his emphasis on mathematics, modern science has adopted a more difficult epistemological path. Whereas Protagoras concludes that certainty, and hence knowledge, is impossible, and Plato concludes that certainty, and hence knowledge, is possible, modern science assumes that although certainty is not possible, knowledge is possible nevertheless. Reasonable and reliable beliefs about the nature of the physical world are possible, even though we cannot have absolute assurance that our beliefs are true.