I Know I Don’t Know

Well yes, I am more than sure that all of you have already heard of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the masters of ancient classical philosophy. There would not have been a beginning without them and none of the greatest philosophers, even of the contemporary age, would have managed to develop a single concrete idea, think of Immanuel Kant who still criticized Plato during the period of the Enlightenment (1750). Many think that Caltech is a completely STEM university, where there is no room for humanities courses, and in some ways it is, to be honest. However, as soon as I arrived and started to settle into the daily life of this university, I realized how much the thoughts of these philosophers completely influence the approach, the method, and the education of this university. It might seem strange to you, but let’s navigate deeper by asking ourselves how these cornerstones of philosophy live with us every day.

Let’s start with the first, Socrates, a man to marry in my opinion (but for now I haven’t found any Socrates available, the search will be particularly difficult… I think) he was the true creator and master of philosophy as we know it, he was the first to define the concept of philosophy, coining the same term. It derives from the Greek form FILOS which means “friend” and SOFIA (THEY SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN ANCIENT GREEK as in the image below) which means wisdom; therefore, concretely, all philosophers love wisdom. Let’s stop for a second, “love wisdom”, isn’t that what we’re here for? Dare mighty things, daring, researching, through the immense and profound passion that unites us, even if in different subjects, but related to the common good, to the love of science and knowledge.

So let’s high-five ourselves, we are all philosophers here, even without a wig on a statue in the Acropolis of Athens, we are philosophers because we research science, we love discoveries, and we sail to obtain them. Socrates never wrote anything in his life and everything we know about him was written by his pupil and disciple Plato (so be careful professors because if you have a post-doc who likes to write…maybe you’ll end up in some newspaper!). We might ask ourselves why he never wrote anything, he was a star throughout Athens everyone knew him and waited to hear him every day, especially the young people. From here comes the famous phrase that is documented “I KNOW I DON’T KNOW”. What? According to Socrates, it was not possible to have a complete truth, in short, wisdom consists in recognizing one’s ignorance and being aware of the limitations of one’s knowledge. In other words, “knowing that you don’t know” means recognizing that there are many things we don’t know and can’t know completely. And don’t we do this every day as students? We listen, we participate in lessons, and we write and study because we are constantly searching for knowledge, which deep down we know does not exist. We could never be Omniscient, Caltech in some way encourages us to be, or at least to try to obtain the much coveted Swedish medal, yet each of us, professors, students, graduate students, and workers, is aware of having a limit, as Socrates.

He didn’t feel worthy of writing because he didn’t know the real and complete truth. Here we come to another maxim of Socrates “A life without research is not worth living for man”. Wait, wait! We live this every day! With Socrates we have the first definition of a life dedicated to philosophy, in which knowledge is never placed as a final and definitive term, but as a road to follow until death. Caltech is considered one of the best universities in the world for research, we fight every day to find answers, even partial ones, for a concept, a topic, or a hypothesis (Galilean scientific method). Reflecting on these words I would say that the admissions office would have admitted Socrates (pragmatic reflection).

Analyzing more deeply, the central point around which the philosophical figure of Socrates revolves is the link between virtue, knowledge, and happiness. By virtue, we mean the realization of right actions and the pursuit of moral good. Doesn’t it remind us of something that is continually in our subconscious, the Honor code? Moral good in turn arises from knowledge. Socrates believes that man does good when he knows what good consists of; vice versa, immoral actions arise from ignorance.

The School of Athens is a fresco created between 1509 and 1511 by the Italian Renaissance painter Raffaello Sanzio and is located in the Stanza della Segnatura, one of the four “Vatican Rooms”, located inside the Apostolic Palaces. It is one of the most important pictorial works in the Vatican Museums in Rome. In the Center, we can find Plato and Aristotle. On the left with the green dress explaining his truth, there is Socrates. It is interesting actually to see that Plato has his hand pointed toward the sky, because his philosophy is mainly focused on ideas and abstract reality, Aristotle, instead, points his hand toward the earth meaning his philosphy is concrete and rational. We will focus on these guys next time!

Pursuing virtue through knowledge leads to happiness. Wait, what does all this mean? Welcome to the great soup of philosophy! To understand these things you have to read the text three, four, infinite times, and sometimes you don’t understand anyway (especially with abstruse philosophers like Hegel, rest in peace but you made me suffer last year!), but from the beginning, the question is why these people thought so much. I think they had a good time!

Let’s get serious again. In Socrates’ vision, happiness consists in corresponding to one’s nature. Since man is by nature a social animal, says Socrates, his task is to live in the community and contribute to the good of the community through his actions. Therefore, if through adequate knowledge of what good is, man behaves in a virtuous manner, he realizes himself, and his nature as a social animal, and therefore can be said to be happy. For Socrates, good cannot be defined once and for all. Man, through the use of reason, must ask himself from time to time what good consists of.

Socrates, from this point of view, supports man’s ability to arrive at a correct understanding of the good through reason, controlling the instincts that instead lead him towards vice. In this sense, Socrates adheres to an entire tradition of values summarized in the motto “know thyself” (gnothi sauton - again look at the image below), which incites man to pursue moderation, to understand ethical limits not to be exceeded. This position is defined as moral rationalism = that is, moral action is determined by the ability of reason to control instincts. Do you think that I went up the stairs of my school when I had the Greek version and there was an engraving of this Socratic maxim, in my mind I said to myself “Yes yes, I know myself”, but do we know each other? Let’s reflect on these words.

GNOTHY from Greek is a medium-passive imperative, now we don’t go into grammar, but we know when a verb is passive, that is when we undergo an action, therefore we “undergo” the action of knowing ourselves, of being. Medium, however, no longer exists in any language, not even in modern Greek: it consists of doing an action with great intensity, almost as if we were acting with an internal will. So if “the medium” existed in English we would use it when we say “I want the Christmas holidays to arrive”. This is an action that we desire with all of ourselves. Socrates uses the middle passive because he believes, as written before, that the action of knowing is something internal, strong, and uncontrollable carried out by our “vital breath”. Yes, Socrates (and here I return to the genius of this man) was the first to talk about soul PSYXE (AGAIN IN GREEK BELOW) which is much more than breath, it is spirit. SAUTON (IN GREEK BELOW) is a reflexive pronoun with object complement, so let’s return to the fact of interiority, of seeking oneself in the fact that good cannot be defined once and for all and that its understanding arises from constantly asking oneself what the good consists, there is the essence of what Socrates means by knowledge. True knowledge is never taking a certain truth for granted but putting every truth, every supposition knowledge, always under discussion. The very essence of philosophy lies in this path to knowledge. The wise man, Socrates claims, is the one who, precisely, knows that he does not know.

There is an immense difference between the Italian/European system and the American one that I am experiencing and which I am approaching and perhaps hopefully getting used to. Memorization is the basis of everything, I have spent years memorizing notions and, of course, this has developed my mnemonic ability, but I now find myself in a place where everything is the opposite and there is a clear similarity with the continuation of the thought of Socrates. THE so-called maieutics. Or give birth to the truth. Every problem set, every Quiz, and exam encourages us to “give birth” and mature, a truth through our knowledge. Socrates, in 470 BC, was looking for the same thing. According to Socrates, truth is present in each of us. The problem is that to get there we need to do some digging that involves incessant examination of what we believe is right.

For this reason, Socrates developed an educational method called maieutic dialogue. Let’s try to understand what this dialogue consists of, but first make two premises:

1. As the term suggests, the method is based on dialogue between two interlocutors. This first element is already particularly significant: Socrates does not believe in the written word, as we said before. The road to knowledge is instead - says Socrates - an always open road, which develops through the comparison between multiple points of view. Collaboration? But not too much!
2. The second necessary premise is that the Socratic dialogue is based on the presence of an interlocutor who, through his questions, helps the second interlocutor to bring out the truth. This passage is also significant: the true master, the true wise man, is not the one who possesses the truth and transmits it to the other, to the student. Rather, he is the one who acts as a support to direct the other on the path to knowledge. The professors?

There’s plenty of space to reflect! But what are the steps of the method?

1. The first moment is that of irony = the person leading the dialogue asks a series of questions to his interlocutor, trying to understand what he thinks he knows about a certain topic. The teacher’s attitude is ironic in the sense that the teacher pretends to agree with the interlocutor, to be impressed by his knowledge. In short, we are in Los Angeles and Hollywood, Socrates had already anticipated what would happen. This fiction, however, only serves to make the other fully express what he thinks he knows about a certain topic.
2. The second moment is that of the examination = the truths that have emerged are at this point subjected by the teacher to a rigorous check, with the aim of analyzing whether this knowledge is solid or whether it rests on contradictory elements and fragile foundations. The purpose of this exam is to lead the interlocutor to question his position until he has made a clean sweep of his knowledge.
3. The third moment is the maieutic one = the term maieutics refers to the art of giving birth. In this step of the method, the master helps the student to bring out the truths he possesses within himself, in the same way a midwife helps a woman give birth to her child. Also, in this case, support comes from examining the knowledge that emerges, to analyze whether it is based on solid foundations. This test, another important element to underline, is based on a method called brachylogical. That is, it is based on dry, concise questions, which aim to produce concise answers. The simple question “What is it?” is the essential question of the dialogue because it has the aim of producing a concise answer in the interlocutor, which defines the object being talked about through definitions that are as essential as possible.

I would say that there are so many connections between Socratic thought and Caltech, I would never have said it, I have to be honest! Therefore, when we fall into the search for truth, into assiduous perfectionism, and the desire for omniscience, let us remember what Socrates wrote. Knowledge is what allows us to achieve happiness, but we will never be able to know everything, happiness is therefore a process of constant search. In addition, we give birth to our truths, because deep down everyone has them. It is a path of collaboration and extraction, but every class teaches us this. Every demonstration is a demonstration of the truth we have inside, of the numbers we see, of the results we aim for, of a limit that tends towards zero or infinity. They are truths that man has managed to achieve after years and so step by step, by knowing ourselves, we will be able to achieve.

PS: Free me from all this philosophy, dear Ancient Greek I did NOT miss you!

On the next issue with Plato, there will be fun!