Footnote Physicist

          “[Aristotle] divided early Greek thinkers into theologi ,who saw the world as controlled by              impetuous supernatural beings, and physici (naturalists), who tried instead to explain an apparently           disordered world in terms of simpler and impersonal principles.  He said the Milesians were the           first physici .”           – Anthony Gottlieb I           “Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at           the bottom of it too?”           – Douglas Adams II           Natural philosophy (or naturalism ) is the understanding that our explanations of the world ought to be carnal , non-teleological, and above...

by Steven Gussman             0 The ancient Greek Sophists were populists—they fancied themselves practical philosophers for laypeople, as opposed to those ivory tower elitists, who horded knowledge for themselves. 1  Surely, we are just as capable as any elite at adducing truth, they thought. And surely you deserve affordable advice about the way the world works, they advertised. Indeed, the enterprise was something of a private market sector phenomenon: it was a for-profit teaching business for practical folk. 2  It is perhaps here in the spirit of populism that we find the root of their vain hubris in thinking they could start from scratch and see further than all past knowledge combined, for the Sophists were relativists. 3             The Sophists were not only moral relativists (believing there are no such things as absolute, objective moral facts), but a much rarer breed: epistemological relativists (bel...