Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Now consider whether knowledge is a thing you can possess in that way without having it about you, like a man who has caught some wild birds--pigeons or what not--and keeps them in an aviary he has made for them at home."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

While having knowledge may be analogous to a man who "has" birds in an aviary, "in another sense he 'has' none of them, though he has got control of them, now that he has made them captive in an enclosure of his own; he can take and have hold of them whenever he likes by catching any bird he choo...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Once more then, just as a while ago we imagined a sort of waxen block in our minds, so now let us suppose that every mind contains a kind of aviary stocked with birds of every sort, some in flocks apart from the rest, some in small groups, and some solitary, flying in any direction among them all."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"When we are babies we must suppose this receptacle empty, and take the birds to stand for pieces of knowledge."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Perhaps, Socrates, we were wrong in making the birds stand for pieces of knowledge only, and we ought to have imagined pieces of ignorance flying about with them in the mind."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)