Metaphysics And Epistemology Essay

Metaphysics and Epistemology The history of philosophy begins with the Pre-Socratic period. The period is named because it was the period before the philosopher Socrates was born. The philosophers that lived during the Pre-Socratic period came up with the idea of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of reality. Socrates was born in 471 BC and brought an end to the Pre-Socratic period and brought the beginning to many new branches of philosophy such as Epistemology, the study of nature and knowledge (A Quick History of Philosophy - General - The Basics of Philosophy). Philosophy is the study of theoretical basis of a branch of knowledge and started around the year 620 BC when Thales theorized that water made up all living things. People of higher social standing in Greece at the time thought this to be incorrect and spread rumors and lies about Thales. Anaximander was a philosopher who came around after Thales but supported everything Thales had theorized. Anaximander also proposed …show more content…
Skepticism is part of epistemology and came around after the death of Aristotle. The skeptics argued that nothing can be known for certainty. Stoic Antipater raised objection to the skeptics and theorized that skeptics are denying knowledge. Carneades, a member of an academy founded by Plato, took this theory further and said that skeptics theorizing of knowledge are not actually theorizing, but using it as an argumentative strategy. Per Carneades, a skeptic does not try to prove that they know nothing, but assume that they know nothing (epistemology - The history of epistemology). Epistemology and metaphysics come from different backgrounds but ultimately they both fall under philosophy. When it comes down to philosophy, dialectics is how learning happens. While epistemology studies what is truth, metaphysics studies what is real (Social