In the Theaetetus, Socrates encourages Theaetetus to share his own account of knowledge. On his first attempt, Theaetetus defines knowledge through a list of examples of topics that one might be knowledgeable about, like the subjects of arithmetic or geometry and “crafts such as cobbling” (146d). This initial reply does not satisfy Socrates, as he wants an explanation of knowledge itself, not of what “one may have knowledge of, or of how many branches of knowledge there are” (146e). Theaetetus' example of cobbling would be useless because the concept of cobbling, the knowledge of how to cobble shoes, has no content without an understanding of the concept of knowledge (147b). Instead, Socrates requests a unifying definition of knowledge, one
