Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

It's the first time for me to seriously read a Philosophy Article, Although it is hard to understand at beginning, after several times read, understand and discuss, it become more understandable. And I feel it's really good to read such an article for engineers. It provides some energy and make me relax. Except struggle to alive in the world, People need to think sometime during the life, it's spirit energy. It extend our thinking, avoid us been locked in fixed mindset.
From Plato's Theaetetus:

Actually it's an article that record of Socrates and Theaetetus's dialogue. Theduros introduce Teaetetus as a very remarkable Athenian youth to Socrates, and Socrates want to examine if Theaetetus worthy his praise by asking question if "wisdom and knowledge are the same" and "what is knowledge".

During the Dialogue, Socrates play the role as a soul midwife, who wants to help Theaetetus define and understand "knowledge" he said:"I watch over the labor of their souls, not of their bodies. And the most important thing about my art is the ability to apply all possible tests to the offspring, to determine whether the young mind is being delivered of a phantom, that is, an error, or a fertile truth". Theaetetus thought "knowledge is simply perception" at beginning, Socrates raise two problems about this opinion, "false perception" and "dreaming and waking phenomena". And From this part, I realize nobody and nothing are judges, everything may change, we often use our experience and feeling to judge a matter, but it may not be the truth. Sense is not knowledge. After that, Theaetetus gives another opinion "true judgment may well be knowledge". Socrates talked about "misapplication" by holding the wax example. And I realize I am still in the level of "Knowing" which is the having of knowledge which is not the possession of knowledge. After redefine, Theaetetus thought "it is true judgment with an account that is knowledge; true judgment without an account falls outside of knowledge", and Socrates use the example of "Letters and syllables" to refute this again. Theaetetus didn't get an exact answer, and from now I think Philosophy do not have an exact answer, it's not like a coding, we only think in a straight way, even with different methods, the final purpose is to get the same result. In philosophy, with different ways in different condition, the answers are always different. Sophistry is a charm point in philosophy. And for the question, I think the modern terms "empiricism" refers to those people who define a matter by their "knowing" through their eyes and ears. In Socrates opinion, we know something through our eyes and ears, but it may not be truth, eyes and ears is a tool, it's not measurement, even we know we can not just define it as "knowledge", everything may change, they may have some unknown sections which probably can totally redefine the matter.

From Kant's Critique of Pure Reason:

This is much harder to read than Plato's Teaetetus, there are too much professional English word in the article, I have to check dictionary all the time since my mother language is not English, it's a big challenge for me. But I think as an engineer, I should like Kant more, it's more logical.

Kant was living in a century where full of Synthetic prior judgments, and he was confused by Hume's empiricism, and he reject Hume's empiricism. Kant tells an example of synthetic judgments "7+5=12", and thinks mathematics is synthetic judgment a prior. Then Kant proposes a new basis for a science of metaphysics, posing the question: "how is a science of metaphysics possible, if at all?", and he uses experiments to prove "the abandonment of the quest to try to know the world as it is ‘in itself' independent of sense experience." From this I know sense or pure reason can not independently support a view, they have to do a combination. Neither sense nor pure reason can alive without experience. I feel Kant is really good at collation. There is four principle to understand the "pure": Axioms of Intuition, Anticipations of Perception, Analogies of Experience, Postulates of Empirical Thought in General. For the question, I think he means, the sense which is ability that we get an appearance of an object, by having been stimulated by this object, and through this we get an intuition of object, furthermore this intuition will be thinking by knowledge, and finally it become a concept. As he said from the beginning we have to assume the object conform to our cognition.

Conclusion:

Until now, I find both Plato's Theaetetus and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason were talking about "Know". I think if I know the background and history about them, I will get a new understand of these two articles.