Search | Site Index | Links | Contact

Research | A.I. | Cognition | Services | About AKRI | Papers | Museum

Applied Knowledge & Innovation

Museum : Philosophers

In order to foster a greater appreciation of current thinking about the nature of knowledge we feel that is useful to look at how knowledge has been thought about by previous generations. So here is a brief history of knowledge through philosophical analysis. More detailed information about these thinkers and others can be found at The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Georgias

• Lifetime : 485-380 BC
• School of Thought : Greek Sophist
• Concepts
  • Nothing Exists.
  • If anything does exist it cannot be known.
  • If anything exists and can be known it cannot be communicated

Protagoras

• Lifetime : 480-411 BC
• School of Thought : Greek Sophist
• Concepts
  • Nothing is absolutely good or bad, true or false, so each individual is therefore his own final authority.
  • Man is the measure of all things

Socrates

• Lifetime : 470-399 BC
• School of Thought : Greek Sophist
• Concepts
  • Every person has innate knowledge of ultimate truth and need only be spurred into conscious reflection to become aware of it.
  • The philosophers task is to provoke thought not to teach.
  • Knowledge originates in sensory perception.

Plato

• Lifetime : 428-347 BC
• School of Thought : Rationalist
• Concepts
  • Reality lies in abstract thought.
  • Abstract knowledge is superior to imperfect concrete observation.

Aristotle

• Lifetime : 384-322 BC
• School of Thought : Empiricist
• Concepts
  • Knowledge is acquired through empirical evidence obtained through experience and observation.
  • Induction of principles from observation.
  • Represention of logic by the syllogism.

Thomas Aquinas

• Lifetime : 1225-1274 AD
• School of Thought : Catholic
• Concepts
  • Perception is the starting point for knowledge and logic is the intellectual procedure for arriving at reliable knowledge. (Also believed in faith)

Francis Bacon

• Lifetime : 1561-1620 AD
• School of Thought : English Empiricist
• Concepts
  • First to formulate rules of inductive inference.
  • Called for new scientific method based on inductive generalisation

Rene Descartes

Concepts

• Lifetime : 1596-1650 AD
• School of Thought : French Rationalist
• Concepts
  • Based on mathematical proof.
  • Application of deductive and analytical methods.

Locke

• Lifetime : 1632-1704 AD
• School of Thought : English Empiricist
• Concepts
  • Argued that knowledge is derived from experience either of the external world through sensation or the mind through reflection.
  • One cannot have absolute certain knowledge of the physical world.

George Berkeley

• Lifetime : 1685-1753 AD
• School of Thought : Irish Empiricist
• Concepts
  • The only things that one can observe are ones own sensations and these are in the mind.
  • Knowledge comes from ideas but there is no distinction between ideas and objects.

Hume

• Lifetime : 1711-1776 AD
• School of Thought : Scottish Empiricist
• Concepts
  • Knowledge is of two kinds.
    • Knowledge comes from ideas but there is no distinction between ideas and objects.
    • Knowledge derived from the senses which is largely a knowledge of cause and effect, which means that one cannot hope to predict scientific development or for scientific knowledge to remain true.

Kant

• Lifetime : 1724-1804 AD
• School of Thought : German Idealist
• Concepts
  • One can have certain knowledge but such knowledge is more informative about the structure of thought than about the outside world.
  • Three types of knowledge:
    1. Analytical base truths (uninformative).
    2. Synthetic - learned from experience - prone to error.
    3. Synthetic base truths - pure intuition (mathematics and philosophy)

Hegel

Concepts

• Lifetime : 1770-1831 AD
• School of Thought : German Rationalist Revival
• Concepts
  • Thought and History.

Edmund Husserl

• Lifetime : 1859-1934 AD
• School of Thought : Moravian Phenomenologist
• Concepts
  • To distinguish the way things appear from the way one thinks that they really are.
  • Understanding the conceptual foundations of knowledge.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

• Lifetime : 1889-1951 AD
• School of Thought : Austrian Logical Positivist
• Concepts
  • Logic empiricism.
  • Logic positivitism.
  • Use of language.
  • Tacit knowledge.

Dr. John L Gordon August 2001

 

© 2005 AKRI Ltd. Applied Knowledge Research & Innovation

Website by funzig web design : Ribble Valley, Blackburn & Lancashire