The Greek word sophia properly refers to cleverness or skill in handicraft and the productive arts, such as carpentry, music, singing, poetry, chariot driving, medicine, and even divination. In short it tends to pick out the sort of excellence in a particular domain that derives from experience and expertise. In early applications of the term to "wise men," for example the Seven Sages, the term referred primarily to the sorts of skills that would make for expertise in matters of common life and so was virtually synonymous with practical wisdom or prudence (phronêsis). By the late fifth century BCE, however, the term was coming to have a more specialized meaning having to do with technical skill and the expertise derived from expert training and experience; that is, it encompassed both a knowledge base and an intimate familiarity with the applications of that knowledge base. The Sophists in...