Liddell & Scott say that the ancient Greek verb τεκμαίρομαι means “to fix by a mark or boundary, to ordain, decree … “
You could argue that the idea began with this notion: The gods tried to educate humans by marking boundaries. But marks and markers aren’t really marks unless they are recognized as such by others — a mark has to mean something to someone else.
The Greeks loved stories about some hapless man failing to recognize a divine boundary. They also noted the importance of being able to perceive something as a mark or sign and to make inferences, conclusions and judgments.
By Epicurus’s time, the idea had shifted a bit further. He said that our senses — not the gods — are the boundary markers we should use in making inferences.
I got stopped by a passage in Diogenes Laertius for a couple of reasons.
First, if you have read British philosophers of the last century, you might have been led to believe that British thinkers invented empiricism.
Second, I’m interested in what a note is — what it means to mark something in a way that others can notice it too. If you can mark something in this way, you can return to it, perhaps remark on it. You can find your place again. The idea that you’re observing some kind of boundary when you’re doing this is interesting.
• Source: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers; translated by R.D. Hicks; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991, Vol. II, p. 568.
