How can one enquire into that which he doesn't know? And if one finds what he wants, how will he ever know this is the thing he did not know?
So goes the riddle posed by Meno. To this, Socrates argues that 'learning' is not about gaining new knowledge per se (which is impossible in his mind) but rather retrieving already acquired knowledge hidden within our 'immortal souls' (which I take an allegorical way of naming an abstract idea that was not and still isn't entirely understood about the human mind).
To prove this, Socrates took a boy with no prior education and quizzed him about geometry. Socrates asserts that by doing so, he isn't teaching the boy anything, but merely assisting him in discovering what he does not know, help the boy doubt of what he thinks he knows.
…show more content…
I do not believe we are born possessing all kinds of knowledge, but rather specific and basic building principles common to all members of the same species. This specific innate knowledge helps, for example, baby birds recognize predators, Arctic foxes find food under meters of snow and human children learn the language present in their environment. These innate concepts such as our language faculty or capacity to reason form a common structure that enables us to make sense of the world.
Education (or the nurture side of the equation) has, in my mind two functions: first, it is to activate these innate abilities and elemental concepts and translate some of them into a more explicit form of knowledge (language, for example). Second, it is, as Socrates argues, about giving students the 'Torpedo's shock'; beat into them a sense of humility and the ability to remedy their ignorance. Help them learn how to use their innate abilities and the concepts presents in their minds to elaborate a more empirical form of