1
What is knowledge?
Knowledge is central to our existence
Enriches our lives, helps us flourish, warns us about threats and enables us to predict the patterns of nature
2
The Pre-socratics
The pre-socratics were a disparate group of Greek philosophers
Earliest was Thales
Can be seen as both inventors of philosophy and science
Saw the world as ordered and explicable and its constituent parts arranged in a comprehensible manner
3
Who were the pre-socratics?
Term ‘presocratic’ refers applies to all early Greek theorists with cosmological or philosophical interests active before the end of the 5th century BC (excluding the Sophists)
The early cosmologists wanted to build theories about the universe as a whole
Theirs was an ancient tradition