On the other
hand, I imagine there is nothing to prevent a man in one sense knowing
what he is learning, in another not knowing it. The strange thing
would be, not if in some sense he knew what he was learning, but if he
were to know it in that precise sense and manner in which he was
learning it.
2
We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge
of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way in which
the sophist knows, when we think that we know the cause on which the
fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further,
that the fact could not be other than it is. Now that scientific
knowing is something of this sort is evident-witness both those who
falsely claim it and those who actually possess it, since the former
merely imagine themselves to be, while the latter are also actually,
in the condition described. Consequently the proper object of
unqualified scientific knowledge is something which cannot be other
than it is.
There may be another manner of knowing as well-that will be
discussed later. What I now assert is that at all events we do know by
demonstration.
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