"I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."
for "corrupting the youth of the city-state and asebeia (impiety) against the pantheon (gods) of Athens."
So my claim above that it's about the religion vs science still stays. "Science" is of course relatively modern term, the older one was "natural philosophy."
Which is actually romantic nonsense, just like those people who say in the modern world that "we know nothing about how things work". We know plenty. We just don't know it all.
A man who says he knows something is also being less of a wanker than a man who says he knows nothing, especially if the latter then uses that comment as leverage to claim wisdom over the former.
Read more from the original, taking just a small quote out of it doesn't do it justice. Also see my other comment for the context. The context matters.
It's about the claims based on faith versus the acknowledging the scope of what we actually know so that we can actually find out, which produces the absurdities in the religions for which they have to shame themselves today, as these simply don't match what we know today for sure.
Socrates was sentenced to death for impiety, that's the part of his own, obviously unsuccessful, defense.
I indeed haven't read the original. In context, it may make sense, but certainly pulled out of context like this, it's romantic twaddle.
Whenever I hear a person say that 'we really know nothing', it always reminds me of Insane Clown Posse being angry that science has an explanation for how magnets work... as in, finding comfort in expressing ignorance :)
Well, what's true is that these particular sentences were often not only used out of the context but even particularly modified to the significantly different "I know that I know nothing."
"Evidence that Socrates does not actually claim to know nothing can be found at Apology 29b-c, where he claims twice to know something. See also Apology 29d, where Socrates indicates that he is so confident in his claim to knowledge at 29b-c that he is willing to die for it."
So he was what we'd today call "a scientist" being ready to admit the changing but the finite limits of the knowledge while acquiring the new knowledge, not "an ignorant."
But it's also not surprising that not everybody even understood what was that about.
"I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."
Plato: Apology, ~ 400BC