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epistemology

epistemology

9 9.9
The study of how people know things and how well they know them
  • noun
  • /ˌɛpɪstəˈmɑlədʒi/
  • Specialized
translation icon : epistemología
  • The study of epistemology helps us understand how knowledge is constructed and validated.
  • starting point for epistemology
  • Indigenous epistemologies
  • epistemology and ethics

This is a important term in Stoic epistemology or Stoic logic, if you like.

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Examples

  • And epistemology has another name, theory of knowledge.

  • Now science is basically cultures answer to the big problem of epistemology, which is how can we know anything at all?

  • In other words, the observer produces an epistemology of his or her own.

    Academic text (2008)
  • Particularly, he sought to develop an epistemology by which others could attain such knowledge.

    Academic text (1991)
  • I mean, look, possibilities were central to epistemology, right from Descartes on, if not before.

  • The Price of Postmodernism: Epistemology and the Literary Canon.

  • A dialectical epistemology sees contradictions as opportunities to be sought out and developed.

    Academic text (2008)
  • The very structure of Bonaventure's epistemology raises difficulties concerning philosophical wisdom.

    Academic text (2008)
  • Second, educators should actively engage prospective teachers' personal epistemologies with concrete tasks.

    Academic text (2015)
  • Rorty's dismissal of metaphysics and epistemology in favor of the cultivation of new vocabularies calls for further comment.

    Academic text (1991)

Surface Forms

epistemology singular

Morphology

epistemology = episteme (opaque) = episteme + ology

The suffix -ology is recognizable, but the base episteme is specialized and unlikely to be known by an average B1 learner.

Etymology

Epistemology comes from the Greek root episteme 'knowledge' and the ending -logy 'study', the same ending you see in biology. So, epistemology is the study of how we know things and what makes knowledge reliable.