# epistemology

Pronunciation: say "i-pis-tuh-MOL-uh-jee" US /ɪˌpɪstəˈmɑləd͡ʒi/, UK /ɪˌpɪstəˈmɒləd͡ʒi/

## Noun

1. The branch of philosophy that studies knowledge, asking what it is, how it is gained, what people know, and how they can tell it is true.
   - Simple: The part of philosophy that asks what knowledge is and how we know things are true.
   - _Much of modern epistemology is concerned with what it takes for a belief to count as justified._
   - _Her research sits where epistemology meets psychology, asking how beliefs turn into knowledge._
2. A particular theory of knowledge, or one version or school of it, as held by a thinker or tradition.
   - Simple: One person's or group's own ideas about what knowledge is and how we get it.
   - _In Kant's epistemology, the mind supplies the forms through which experience is organized._
   - _Feminist epistemologies ask whose experience has counted as knowledge in the first place._

## Origin

Ancient Greek supplied both parts: epistḗmē, meaning "science, knowledge," from epístamai ("I know"), and -logía, "study or logic of," which goes back to lógos ("speech, language"). James Frederick Ferrier (1808–1864), a philosopher from Scotland, introduced the term into philosophical writing in English.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/epistemology (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).