Greek philosopher, Democritus, took the healthy inheritance his father left him, and used every penny to travel to foreign lands for one reason: knowledge. He was obsessed with learning for learning’s sake - modest, simplistic in lifestyle, living exclusively for his studies. He was one of the first humans ever to discuss the concept of an atomic structure behind everything in the physical world. He's sometimes called the father of modern science, and he was born in 490 BC.
He was known as the laughing philosopher, not because he was jolly, but because he mocked others - laughing at their ignorance. Like I said, he lived for learning. Plato couldn't stand the guy, and it's said that all of the vast writings of Democritus were burned after his death on Plato's request. We only know of him through the writings of other concurrent philosophers.
Most interesting to me in this moment, is his stance on epistemology - the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. Truth, he said, is difficult to reach because it is at the bottom of our subjective sensory perceptions. Each individual perceives their understanding of reality through the five senses, and each person can derive different impressions from the same set of sensory data. We use those perceptions to distill truth, but truth is subjective and distorted by the individual's reaction to the sensory input.
"And again, many of the other animals receive impressions contrary to ours; and even to the senses of each individual, things do not always seem the same. Which then, of these impressions are true and which are false is not obvious; for the one set is no more true than the other, but both are alike. And this is why Democritus, at any rate, says that either there is no truth or to us at least it is not evident." Aristotle, Metaphysics.
And:
"Democritus says: By convention hot, by convention cold, but in reality atoms and void, and also in reality we know nothing, since the truth is at the bottom." Diogenes Laertius
He called the two kinds of knowing "legitimate" and "bastard".
Bastard is our knowledge through perception of the senses - invalid, insufficient and subjective. Legitimate knowledge can only be achieved through intellect, elaborating the sense data from 'bastard' knowledge, grasping the truth through inductive reasoning. In other words, get the human animal out of the way, with his own sensational version of reality and truth that isn't, in actuality, the real truth. Real truth is buried beneath our human animal perceptions and sense based constructs.
Only when we reduce the excessive, subjective sensory data, can we examine causes, draw conclusions, and discover relational causality. That's where the truth lives.
From Sextus: To quote Democritus' actual words: Of knowledge there are two forms, one legitimate, one bastard. To the bastard belong all this group: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The other is legitimate and separate from that. Then, preferring the legitimate to the bastard, he continues: When the bastard can no longer see any smaller, or hear, or smell, or taste, or perceive by touch, but finer matters have to be examined, then comes the legitimate, since it has a finer organ of perception.
Now that is sublime thought, and I do believe distilled, non-sensually based, genuine truth.
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