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Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

But back then they hadn't figured out how to become highly paid fools at taxpayer expense. This is the true genius of today's academics.

[jobim]

Not so. Sophists in Periclean Greece (450 BC) were well-paid travelling professors. One of their prize students was Socrates, who later smashed their jargon to smithereens.

They said such as: 1) nothing exists 2) if anything did exist it could not be proved 3) if anyone could conclusively determine that anything existed, he would have no way of communicating this knowledge to anyone else

Stanley Fish, you are not new.