ABSTRACT
About 2,400 years ago, there lived a man in ancient Athens who continually interrupted the Athenians in their street discussions. Why did he persist in asking people if they were really wise, and then demonstrating that they weren’t wise by pointing out the contradictions in their statements? When they asked him what his role was, he said that he had been sent to be “a saddle burr for the state. “The gods sent me to Athens,” he said, “in order to disrupt your quiet complacency and to show you, by asking questions, what really is the truth. My role is to make you think.”
