ABSTRACT
Men’s relationship with knowledge (episteme) has been an ambiguous one for millennia. ere seems to be a deep fear that wanting to know too much can be dangerous, or at least knowing too much about what Ginzburg (1976) has coined “high knowledge”; that is, insight into the secrets of nature (arcana naturae), secrets of God (arcana Dei) and power (arcana imperii) (Ginzburg 1976). e Bible tells us the story of Adam who followed his curiosity and ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Figure 5.1). And as he did so, humanity was tossed from paradise. In his Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul warned the Romans noli altum sapere, sed time, which has been translated and interpreted as an appeal to not know too much. But, at the same time, Aristotle famously begins his Metaphysics declaring that “All men by nature desire to know” (Aristotle 1984, Book 1). Maslow (1970) talks about “the reality of the cognitive needs” (p. 49).
