The Content of Knowledge

Abstract

The history of the theory of knowledge from the Greeks through the 17th Century can be written as a history of attempts to construct an account of knowledge as certainty (i.e., infallibilism). This history might also be written from a variety of other points of view, for example, as the conquest of reason, as the accumulation of truth, and as the continuing quest for rationality, among other candidates. No particular view has a clear lien on accuracy. But the question here is not which of the many historical perspectives that there are is the correct one. Rather, the problem is how to choose among these perspectives. Despite what was said earlier against simple-minded wholesale categorizations of individual thinkers, we need to provide at least a working Solution to this problem because without a systematic rendering of the past we cannot employ contemporary categories of analysis to best advantage. As noted earlier, my purpose is not merely to explicate Galileo’s epistemological views, but to understand how those views contribute to our understanding of science. It is for this reason that I am making the effort to translate some of Galileo’s concerns into our modern idiom. And, as we have seen, he raises the issue of certainty himself fairly early. Thus, it is important to locate the issue of certainty on the historical screen, but only in broad and, we grant, not indelible strokes.