Many ancient cultures had sophisticated methods for organizing knowledge. However, systematic, self-conscious reflection on the nature of knowledge itself appears to have originated in Greek philosophy.
And as for what is clear, no man has seen it, nor will there be anyone Who knows about the gods and what I say about all things; For even if one should happen to say what has absolutely come to pass Nonetheless one does not oneself know; but opinion has been constructed in all cases. …
The idea that learning is recollection recurs in other works of Plato, but in conjunction with the notion of separate, purely intelligible Forms. How exactly Plato conceives of Forms, and the motivations he has for postulating them, are controversial. But it is clear that each Form is thought of as encapsulating the being, or the essence, of the quality of which it is the Form; the Form of Beauty,…
We think we know a thing without qualification … whenever we think we know the explanation because of which the thing is so, know that it is the explanation of that thing, and know that it does not admit of being otherwise. …
The Epicureans, in the same period, also seem to have been concerned with minimizing error. They strikingly claimed that "all perceptions are true," and that error occurs only in our interpretations of them. However, this seems to be bound up with the atomist theory of sense perception, in which objects give off constant streams of atoms that enter our eyes (or other sense organs). &…
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