ABSTRACT
Institutions of higher education started in fourth-century Greece, and all the science and mathematics taught in the world today derives from them. The ancient Greeks were interested in two quite different classes of fact, mathematical and physical. The theory of scientific explanation makes it possible to give scientific explanations of purposive behaviour. Pushing their enquiries further, and asking why the same action has different effects on different things, Greek thinkers reverted to material factors. Philosophers since the eighteenth century have thought that to explain something scientifically is to show that it could have been predicted. Teleological and technical understanding is universal and necessary; without them we should not survive. When the necessities of life have been provided, and still more when there is civilization and a leisured class, people give rein to idle curiosity and new kinds of understanding arise.
