science, knowledge

Lecture: Science and Knowledge 20/11/25


  1. Knowledge and truth: Greek philosophy

  • Physis (“nature”)

  • Logos: Emphasis on logic and rationality

  • Writing is mostly prose, not poetry

  • Distrust of sense → Material world is not reflective of reality

  • Gnome (“opinion”) is what we can derive from senses

  • Episteme (“knowledge”)

  • Natural science v. moral philosophy: observations of the world, how we should live in it

  • Socrates (469-399 BCE)

  • Plato (c. 429-347 BCE)

  • Elenchos (“cross examination”)

  • Body vs. soul: 

    • Soul is impt to Plato bc of its connection the universe… the soul is immortal 

  • Republic

  • Phaedo (399 BCE): Socrates had been convicted of corrupting the Athenian youth and sentenced to death and Phaedo tries to help him escape but Socrates refuses bc he’s not scared of death

    • Fear of death is irrational bc when you die, you can finally have contact w reality

  • Forms: imagination is remembering the perfect form of smth from before you were born

  • Aristotle (384-322 BCE): logic, metaphysics, life, mind, nature, art, politics, ethics

  • Academy (plato)

  • Lyceum (aristotle)

  • Major hellenistic philosophical schools:

  1. Epicureanism: universe has no meaning at all, there is no grand design or purpose, everything around us came by coincidence, body and soul distinction is not impt bc everyone is made up of atoms, no life, meaning, or purpose after death

    1. Highest good is hedone (“pleasure”); hedonism

    2. Pleasure is not drinking, sex, etc. but instead sober reasoning

    3. No pain, no disturbance, no anxiety, no worry is the real pleasure

  2. Cynicism: according to Diogenes, social conventions are totally arbitrary. 

  3. Stoicism: also has roots in rejection of social convention

    1. Founded by Zeno (335-263 BCE)

    2. Stoa Poikile

    3. Chyrysippus (280-207 BCE)

    4. virtue is itself sufficient for happiness,  and class doesn’t matter

    5. Most influential school of thought bc of its hard headed emphasis on virtue

  1. knowledge and science: roman power

  • Imperialism and its connections w knowledge making – global empires have led to the diffusion of botany, biology, cartography etc

  • Encyclopedia

  • Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BCE):

  • Disciplines (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine, architecture)

  • Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder) (23-79 BCE) – knowledge needs to become more accessible to men in power like governors

  • The Natural History: cosmology, geography, anthropology, zoology, botany, medicine, metallurgy, mineralogy

  • Geographers:

    • Strabo (c. 64 BCE-20s CE): “It would not serve any political purpose to be well acquainted with these distant places and the people who inhabit them; especially if they are islands whose inhabitants can neither injure us, nor yet benefit us by their commerce. The Romans might easily have conquered Britain, but they did not care to do so, as they perceived there was nothing to fear from the inhabitants (they not being powerful enough to attack us), and that they would gain nothing by occupying the land. Even now it appears that we gain more by the customs they pay, than we could raise by tribute, after deducting the wages of the soldiers necessary for guarding the island and exacting the taxes. And the other islands adjacent to this would be still more unproductive.”

    • Claudius Ptolemaius: more technical, offers technique to mapping the world using latitude and longitude coordinates

  • Medicine

    • Galen (2nd century CE): founder of modern medicine… his works make up 1/10 of all surviving Roman literature.

    • Hippocrates

  1. Education and literacy

  • No system of public education, was only private and very expensive

  • Paedagogus (Greek speaking enslaved person in charge of children) was responsible for basic introductory education for kids from elite families

  • After age 7, children received education from outside the home and they’d be under the guidance of Litterator (“schoolmaster”) where they’d practice writing, the alphabet, etc

  • Grammaticus (“teacher of grammar”)

  • Vergil, Terence, Sallust, Cicero: 4 main authors who were studied bc they were stylistically the best writers of Latin

  • Rhetor (“teacher of rhetoric”) teaches students how to speak in public

  • Declamation: learn to speak extemporaneously about various topics 

  • Basis of education: speaking correctly, interpretation of the poets

  • Upper class Roman girls also received basic education at least to the level of Grammaticus

  • Upper class Greeks never bothered to learn Latin, while upper class Romans did learn Greek

  • Rates of literacy was overall quite low (<10%) bc education was not accessible for the lower classes

    • Literacy = ability to read and interpret texts… most ppl could at the very least write their name (proof is this is surviving graffiti in Pompeii)