Let me begin with an anecdote. Not just with any anecdote but with what is perhaps the ultimate philosophical anecdote, the anecdote of philosophy itself, of its own anecdotic beginning. One night, Thales, the first philosopher, left his house to go for a walk. And as he was going about his usual philosophical business, fixing his gaze on the stars, he failed to notice a ditch and fell right into it. As he lay in the ditch, cursing his bad fortune, an old Thracian woman appeared and addressed him laughingly: "Do you, O Thales, who cannot see what is under your feet, think that you shall understand what is in heaven?"