How did Epicurus justify his knowledge claims?
My understanding of the world begins with what we perceive through our senses. The senses are our most reliable guides, providing us with the raw data of experience. From these direct observations, through repeated perceptions and reasoning, we form general notions. Think of how we see dust motes dancing in a sunbeam; we cannot see the air itself, but we infer its existence from the visible effect. This empirical approach allows us to grasp truths about even the unseen, like the nature of atoms.