Hesiod around 700BCE: theogony of the gods The gods, however, had discovered a way fo tinkering with nature. They had discovered some of the laws underlying nature The gods were powerful because they has discovered some of the secrets of nature. Zeus the most powerful controlled thunder. Prometheus stole fire and used it to hold power over humans, but was punished for it Proteus could change shape and use craft to achieve his ends In Homer we find that the gods can intervene in human affairs and cause jealousy, lust, anger, uproar in human affairs. The gods operate by craft, by concealment and the word Homer uses is techne, meaning cunning or craftiness. It means the judicious use of secret knowledge to further one’s own power interests. Power offered control over nature but not total control because unlike the teknites , the gods did not create a plan but simply used what was there. Here we see two type of knowledge appearing (although not very clearly) expert knowledge, the knowledge of technites (wood engineering, building construction) the secret knowledge of nature, used either to shape it (demiurge) or to express power.
What about medicine? More like a craft than a skill. Physicians had to diagnose sickness and suggest cures. Physicians were valued highly precisely because the knowledge of how the human body work s was so vague. Physicians were valued for their diagnostic skills, their ability first to notice the ailment and get to the roots of it and then cure it. Mythos arises to fill in the holes in knowledge. No need for it in tek type knowledge. This may explain why so may piseogs relate to health, a sign of the fallibility of the knowledge Doctors and health…. In human knowledge Fishing and farming were examples of a craftiness depending on a fallible kind of knowledge in nature Smithing, sculpting, wood work were examples of rational expert knowledge, fully explicable, predictable and reliable. This slide will present the beginnings of the theory Mythos Logos Hippocrates pointed out the difficulty of teaching medicine for this reason that it was not entirely a form of reliable, rationally thorough knowledge. This was not a problem for the ship builder. Why?
Expert – “someone who is likely to go about his task in a rational and dependable manner” (Gould, 1955; Roochnik, 1996) Experts- best teachers because they know the A to Z of a rational process Plan in mind (end in view – telos) Means to achieve that plan Mastery over the process (achieved because of rational nature of this process) The art of Building is a determinate field of knowledge and action, a form of expertise, ordered to produce something which is the end (telos) or end product. Building is an A to Z process. Humans create something out of materials which otherwise would remain unshaped, Irony here is that humans actually create something out of nothing.