Man is the Measure of all Things
Of all things the measure is man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.
Protagorus (c. 440 BCE)
As simple a tool, as the knife above, offers humans a greater range of competencies than possessed by such accomplished manipulators as chimps and crows. How much more so a crane to build a bridge, or a flight to the moon. These technologies we employ, provide us with unconscionable physical powers. At the same time our mental abilities are now magnified beyond previous generations’ dreams, through electronic means. Such things seem ‘off the scale’, leaving human beings no longer the measure. But this cannot be so. There is only
one world;
Kant demonstrates how little can be said about any world other than the one we construct.
one of which we find ourselves to be a part, and which we
jointly created.
A little on how our thoughts combine with our sensations to make our worlds.
Whatever can be for us, is so because we made it so. Any tool, or explanation, has always to be, at base, a tool, or an explanation for what we
can do
Lives rooted in the their traditions and ways of life seem well measured.
or understand. Magnifying our capacities to be able to fly across the world, or destroy more than we can eat, means we have largely lost our measure, and will, proportionately,
lose
Warnings of the damage we do, which we were given decades ago, seem to fail to move us.
the whole earth.
Protagoras is credited with this famous saying by Socrates in Plato’s dialogue The Theaetetus at paragraph 152a. This was written around 369 BCE and is so rendered in many translations.
The man was using a knife to make a cut in a tree to procure the gum to be used for lacquer work. The two cranes were lowering a concrete beam into place as part of the construction of a new road.
Above, hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 6th December 2025
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