midwife image is made in respect of the fact that (apparently by custom and practice in Greece) midwives were barren and hence that Socrates's position, by literary conceit, is supposedly barren, or empty of understanding. It is difficult to agree with Waterfield's interpretation of the metaphor, chiefly because whatever else Theaetetus demonstrates, it is that the structure and strategy of Socrates's mind govern the unfolding argument. Further, Waterfield's statement that the fact of Socratic questioning implies that the questioner knows the answers to be elicited and that such answers are "necessarily correct" (141) is surely wrong, a point that Waterfield has in hand when he says that "Socrates as a midwife may deliver 'still-born' ideas" (141). It seems more appropriate to take the line that Socrates elicits still-born ideas that have their source in Theaetetus. This is not a function of knowing what the answers are but rather a function of the integrity to follow ideas and questions wherever they lead, even if that destination is--as in Theaetetus--ultimately impossible to pin down. Indeterminacy of an idea is not the same as its being still-born; indeed, Theaetetus is structured in a way that profoundly makes the case that awareness of an idea's indeterminacy (in this case the idea of knowledge) is itself a rather crucial idea.
More will be said about the indeterminacy of knowledge as a governing principle of Theaetetus. How this principle emerges can be seen in the structure of argument of the dialogue. Waterfield divides what he calls the "architecture of the dialogue" (134) into four components. First is the introduction, in which Socrates's function as midwife, or agent of logical, rational critique of the problem at hand is established. The introduction
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