The Frontiers of Knowledge

As suggested by reference to Thales above, the story of humankind’s efforts to ‘know what’ in addition to ‘how’, but without relying on imagination and traditional beliefs, first comes fully into view with the philosophers of Greek classical antiquity from the sixth century BCE onwards.

‘Knowledge how’ almost certainly came to be accompanied, at some perhaps quite early point, by efforts to achieve knowledge what – that is, theoretical knowledge, explanations of why the how works.

the paradox of knowledge, which is that the more we know, the more we realize the extent of our ignorance, not least in these three crucial areas of enquiry about the world, the past and the mind