HISTORICAL MODELING DEVELOPMENT OF KNOWLEDGE

Gorgias (483-378 BC): He stated that knowledge does not exit nor can be communicated if existed, because of its subjectivity.

Heraclitus (535-475 BC): Maintained that wisdom is not the knowledge of many things; it is clear knowledge of one thing only. Perfect knowledge is only given to the Gods, but a progress in knowledge is possible for "men."

Empedocles (c.450 BC): He distinguished between the world as presented to our senses and the intellectual world.

Antisthenes (440-370 BC): Maintained that happiness is a branch of knowledge that could be taught, and once acquired can not be lost.

Euclid (430-360 BC): Maintained that knowledge is virtue. If knowledge is virtue, it can only be the knowledge of the ultimate being.

Protagoras (485-415 BC): Maintained that knowledge is relative since it is based on individual experiences. Geometric-arithmetic modeling developed.

Plato (427-322BC): He was one of Socrates students. He maintained that knowledge can exist based on unchanging and invisible Forms or Ideas. Objects that are sensed are imperfect copies of the pure forms. Genuine knowledge about these forms can be achieved only by abstract reasoning through philosophy and mathematics. Plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first university. Aristotle was among its graduates.

Aristotle (384-322 BC): Followed Plato, but maintained that knowledge is derived from sense experiences. Knowledge can be gained either directly or indirectly by deduction using logic. Aristotle founded the Lyceum in Athens, rival school to the Academy. Archimedes and Euclid are among its graduates.

Plotinus (205-270): Plotinus’ principal assumptions can be stated as follows: (1) truth exists and that it is the way the world exists in the mind or the intellect; (2) the awareness of the world as it exists in the intellect is knowledge; and (3) two kinds of truth exist, the contingent truth is that ten coins are in pocket, and a necessary truth is that four plus six equals to ten.

Aquinas (1224-1274): Followed the schools of Plato and Aristotle and added religious belief and faith.

Death of Roman Numbers: The Widespread adaptation of the numeral system we refer to as Arabic numbers in art, science and accounting during the Renaissance era. The introduction of zero as a symbol as well as a number was the most significant achievement in the development of a number system, in which calculation with large numbers became feasible. Without the notion of zero, the descriptive and prescriptive modeling processes in commerce, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and industry would have been unthinkable. The lack of such a symbol for zero is one of the serious drawbacks in the Roman numeral system. In addition, the Roman numeral system is difficult to use in any arithmetic operations. The Roman numeral mostly used as decoration and not in performing any arithmetic operations.

16^th Century: Renaissance era started in Florence and spread quickly. There were over 300 states in Europe, however, statehood-countries began, France was the first country. Revival of pre-Socrates world view. Copernicus modeled that the earth revolves around the sun. Galilee was forced to recant heliocentric model of the universe and put under house-arrest. America continent was found and occupied by European countries.

Bacon (1561-1626): He criticized Aristotelian logic as useless for the discovery of new laws; and formulated rules of inductive inference.

Descartes (1596-1650): As the father of modern philosophy, identified rationalism as a system of thought that emphasized the role of reason and priori principles in obtaining knowledge. He also believed in the dualism of mind (thinking substance) and body (extended substance). Descartes unified algebra and geometry by his analytical-geometry concepts. Roman numeral is replaced by based-ten numeral system to simplify arithmetic operations.

Spinoza (1632-1677): Termed metaphysical (i.e., cosmological concepts such as substance and mode, thought and extension, causation and parallelism, and essence and existence. He extended rationality and deductive reasoning to human activities, including our motives.

Newton (1642-1727): The first who applied mathematics to the study of nature. Aristotelian world view was rejected by Newton's models. Mathematical modeling era started. The first Operations Research (OR) society was established in 1948, meaning that OR was recognized as a profession in aiding the decision makers.

Locke (1632-1704): Identified empiricism as a doctrine that affirms that all knowledge is based on experience, especially sense perceptions, and on posteriori principles. Locke believed that human knowledge of external object is always subject to the errors of the senses, and concluded that one cannot have absolutely certain knowledge of the physical world.

Berkeley (1685-1753): Agreed with Locke that knowledge comes through ideas, i.e., sensation of the mind, but he denied Locke’s belief that a distinction can be made between ideas and objects.

Hume (1711-1776): Asserted that all metaphysical things that cannot be directly perceived are meaningless. Hume divided all knowledge into two kinds: relations of ideas, i.e., the knowledge found in mathematics and logic which is exact and certain but provides no information about the world, and matters of fact, i.e., the knowledge derived from sense perceptions. Furthermore, he held that even the most reliable laws of science might not always remain true. Hume's Treatise of Human Nature introduced logic into Empiricism. Adam Smith' Wealth of Nations was published. His ideas are the foundation of both the British and American Economy.

Kant (1724-1804): Provided a compromise between empiricism and rationalism by combining both types, and distinguished three knowledge types:

1.     an analytical priori,

2.     a synthetic posteriori, and

3.     a synthetic priori.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason started the great era of modern thinkers.

Hegel (1770-1831): He claimed as rationalist that absolutely certain knowledge of reality can be obtained by equating the processes of thought, of nature and of history. His absolute idealism was based on dialectical process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis as cyclical and ongoing process.

1776: The Enlightenment era's ideas fueled the American Revolution. Human beings finally gained their right to decide for themselves.

Comte (1798-1857): Brought attention to the importance of sociology as a branch of knowledge and extended the principles of positivism, the notion that empirical sciences are the only adequate source of knowledge.

Marx (1818-1883): Developed the philosophy of dialectical materialism, based on the logic of Hegel.

Darwin (1809-1882): Darwin's theory of evolution is based on five key observations and inferences drawn from them.

·         First, species have great fertility. They make more offspring than can grow to adulthood.

·         Second, populations remain roughly the same size, with modest fluctuations.

·         Third, food resources are limited, but are relatively constant most of the time. From these three observations it may be inferred that in such an environment there will be a struggle for survival among individuals.

·         Fourth, in sexually reproducing species, generally no two individuals are identical. Variation is rampant.

·         Finally, much of this variation is heritable

From this it may be inferred: In a world of stable populations where each individual must struggle to survive, those with the "best" characteristics will be more likely to survive, and those desirable traits will be passed to their offspring. These advantageous characteristics are inherited by following generations, becoming dominant among the population through time.

Nietzsche (1844-1900): Schopenhauer's pessimistic world view was spread. Later, this nihilistic view was challenged by Nietzsche's life affirmation and its enhancement ideas. Nietzsche put also an end to metaphysics, concluded that traditional philosophy and religion are both erroneous and harmful, and traditional values had lost their power in the lives of individuals. Therefore, there are nor rules for human life, no absolute values, and no certainties on which to reply.

Bradley (1846-1924): Maintained that reality was a product of the mind rather than an object perceived by the senses; like Hegel, nothing is altogether real except the Absolute, the totality of everything which transcends contradiction. Everything else, such as religion, science, moral precept, and even common sense is contradictory.

Royce (1855-1916): Believed in an absolute truth and held that human thought and the external world were unified.

Pierce (1839-1914): He developed pragmatism, as a theory of meaning, in particular, the meaning of concepts used in science. The only rational way to increase knowledge was to form mental habits that would test ideas through observation and experimentation leading to an evolutionary process for humanity and society, i.e., a perpetual state of progress. He believed that the truth of an idea or object could only be measured by empirical investigation of its usefulness.

Dewey (1859-1952): He developed pragmatism into a comprehensive system of thought that he called experimental naturalism, or instrumentalism. Naturalism regards human experience, intelligence, and social communities as ever evolving mechanisms; therefore human beings could solve social problems using their experience and intelligence, and through inquiry.

Husserl (1859-1938): Developed phenomenology as an elaborate procedure by which one is said to be able to distinguish between the way things appear to be, and the way one thinks they really are.

Durkheim (1858-1917): He is credited with attempting the first scientific approach to social phenomena, coining the sociological term social fact to describe distinct units of social information, and The Division of Labor in Society.

Freud (1856-1939): Freud sought to explain how the unconscious operates by proposing that it has a particular structure. He proposed that the unconscious was divided into three parts: Id, Ego, and Superego.

Einstein (1879-1955): Einstein modeled relativity and extended Newton's models . Formulated the special theory of relativity and the general theory of relativity; he also proposed that light consists of discrete quantized bundles of energy (later called photons).

Wittgenstein (1889-1951): Developed logical positivism that maintained that only scientific knowledge exists verifiable by experience. He viewed philosophy as a linguistic analysis and "language games" leading to his work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) that asserted language, or the world, are composed of complex propositions, or into less complex facts, arriving at simple "picture atomic facts or states of affairs" respectively. In short, language as useful to convey sense-experience and logic/mathematics and all else is meaningless

Heidegger(1889-1976): In his "Basic Writings as Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics" Heidegger stated that "..we must now show in what sense the foundation of the modern mathematical science of nature and the origin of the critique of pure reason is essentially mathematical. With this intention we shall try to set forward an essential step of modern science in its main outline. This will make clear what the mathematical consists of and how its thus unfolds its essence, but also becomes established in a certain direction." Heidegger taught philosophy of mathematics at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau.

Austin (1911-1960): Developed the speech-act theory, in which language utterances might not describe reality and can have an effect on reality.

Rawls (1921- 2002): Eliminating knowledge of personal characteristics eliminates the possibility of bias and thus enforces the kind of impartiality or disinterestedness.

Foucault (1926-1984): Knowledge is power: Power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge.

Habermas (1929-): Knowledge can be interpreted as the science of man that appears under categories of knowledge for control. At the level of the self-consciousness of social subjects, knowledge that makes possible the control of natural processes turns into knowledge that makes possible the control of the social life process.

Derrida: (1930-2004): His anti-metaphysic stance is not unique, but derives from his readings of Heidegger who in Being and Time and later works presented a clear argument against the philosophical monopoly created by Aristotelian ontological taxonomy.

Rorty (1931- ): He emphasis on the fact that the idea of knowledge as representation (a model), as a mental mirroring of a mind-external world. However, he sees knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature.

Nozick (1938-2002): His development of an externalist theory of knowledge and his "closest continuer" account of personal identity has been particularly influential.