The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal

by James Franklin

The question arises as to whether the picture of the Sophists in Plato and Aristotle is fair. No more than fragments of the Sophists have survived, and men of genius are not known in general for giving fair treatments of their opponents’ views. The distinction between the Socratic school with its high-minded devotion to the truth and the word-chopping Sophists, clear enough no doubt to Plato, was less so in the popular mind, as is apparent from the satire in Aristophanes’ play The Clouds. There was, then, every motive to exaggerate the differences. The arguments of Gorgias and Antiphon above are not unreasonable, though they do leave the impression that the authors are fundamentally not interested in the truth. The idea of dismissing arguments as merely plausible is a trick of the Sophists themselves, parallel with the rhetorical trick of dismissing one’s opponent’s arguments as mere rhetoric.