Postmodernism - and is that term used much any more? - is simply a reiteration of the sophistic or the rhetorical worldview.

It may well seem that Plato does suggest techne is the best model for moral knowledge. In other words, it may seem that his goal is to establish an expert or authority in the field of the good-bad, just-unjust.

In our lives a dog is a dog rather than a former wolf, and it surely is not a cat, a difference that means an enormous amount to some people.

Modern science is a vast attempt to homogenize the universe. Aristotelian science, by contrast, remains faithful to our lived experience, and thus conceives of the world as essentially heterogeneous; composed of different kinds of beings.

We live in a technocratic culture. We worship at the altar of technology. Our lives are increasingly shaped by the machinations of the techies. It is vital, therefore, for all of us to think hard about the role the technical plays in our lives.

Anyone who studies the contemporary phenomenon of global warming, or who fears the insidious impact that the smartphone is having on our lives, or who remembers that there are enough nuclear warheads on enough intercontinental ballistic missiles to destroy human civilization with some ease, understands that modern technology threatens, indeed is likely, to overwhelm us.

If you want to understand what it means to be afraid, what fear as experienced by human beings is, then your focus must shift. No longer will you be satisfied with mechanical, physiological, neurological accounts. For this inquiry will require you to observe closely what human beings feel, sing, think, write and say to one another.