The ancient Greeks invented democracy, the notion of citizenship and were the first to feel and expose the need to go beyond mere opinions, the teachings of myths and superstitious beliefs. They set out to achieve true knowledge, truly scientific knowledge. Plato, who set up his Academy in Athens in 387 BC, played a key role in this quest.

He refined Socratic dialectics to make it capable of developing systematic knowledge, capable of rising from the sensible to the intelligible - the world of ideas. His influence, one of the most profound in the history of thought, is still on the horizon of all theoretical research today.