Modern humanity has long been accustomed to certain philosophical ideas and teachings and takes them for granted. For example, categories such as "knowledge", "being" or "paradox" have long seemed to us verified and completely clear.
However, there are lesser-known sections of philosophical teachings that are of no less interest to both modern philosophers and the average person. One such area is epistemology.
The essence of the concept
The meaning of this seemingly complex term is easily revealed already in its linguistic structure. It doesn't take a great philologist to understand that "epistemology" is a word with two stems.
The first one is episteme, meaning "knowledge" as such. The second component of this term is better known to modern mankind. The most popular interpretation of the logos part is considered to be "word", however, according to other concepts, its meaning is defined somewhat differently - "teaching".
Thus, it can be determinedthat epistemology is the science of knowledge as such.
Basic teaching
It is easy in this case to understand that this section of philosophy has much in common with epistemology, better known to modern mankind. Representatives of classical philosophical schools even insist on their identification, but if we consider this concept objectively, it turns out that the identity will not be entirely true.
First of all, these sections of science differ in positions of study. The interests of epistemology are aimed at determining the relationship between the object and the subject of knowledge, while epistemology is a discipline of a philosophical and methodological nature, which is most interested in the opposition and interaction of knowledge as such and the object.
Main issues
Any scientific or pseudo-scientific discipline has its own range of interests. The section of philosophy that interests us is no exception in this respect. Epistemology is the science concerned with the study of knowledge as such. In particular, the subject of her research is the nature of knowledge, the mechanisms of its formation and its relationship with objective reality.
Researchers of this kind are working to identify the specifics of acquiring, expanding and systematizing knowledge. The very life of this phenomenon becomes the key problem of this section of philosophy.
Chronological frames
Continuing the theme of identification of epistemology and epistemology, one more feature should be noted, namely, thatthe latter became accessible to human consciousness much earlier. Questions of an epistemological nature arose as early as the era of antiquity, while epistemological ideas were formed somewhat later. As an example, in this case, we can cite Platonic ideas about the referential concept of truth, which at one time served as an impetus for the development and formation of the discipline of interest to us.
Ratio and mutual influence
Epistemology and philosophy (sciences) are quite closely interconnected, simply because of the subject matter of the former. Any component of the real or ideal world is known by us through comprehension, obtaining knowledge about it. And knowledge, as mentioned earlier, is the main object of interest of epistemology. Most of all, it is connected with epistemology, which was the reason for their identification by individual scientists.
Epistemology and philosophy are sciences that are in constant interaction, complementing and improving each other. Perhaps that is why philosophy has reached such heights by our time.
Particular and general
Like any other phenomenon, the discipline we are interested in cannot exist on its own, outside the context of other components. So epistemology in philosophy is only a methodological discipline, which is only a small part of the body of scientific knowledge.
Becoming her was long and rather difficult. Originating in antiquity, epistemology passed through the cruel scholasticism of the Middle Ages, in the eraIt experienced another surge of revival, gradually developing and reaching in a much more perfect form to the present day.
Classic performances
Modern researchers distinguish between traditional and non-classical epistemology. This distinction and opposition is based primarily on the difference in approaches to the study of knowledge.
Classical epistemology is based on a kind of fundamentalism, and knowledge, which is the main object of study, it divides into two main types. The adherents of the classical version of this philosophical section include concepts and views based on the basis of other ideas, phenomena of objective reality, to the first one. This kind of knowledge is quite easy to prove or disprove with simple analysis.
The second class of knowledge includes those, the reliability, the truth of which does not correlate with the ideas that are the epistemological base. They are considered in interaction, but are not attached to each other.
Connection with Charles Darwin
As already mentioned, epistemology in philosophy is a separate discipline, inextricably linked with the others. Due to the specifics of the object and subject of study, its boundaries expand to universal ones, which leads to the borrowing of not only terminology, but also the concepts themselves from other sciences.
Speaking about this branch of philosophy, one should not forget about such a scientific complex as evolutionary epistemology. Most often, this phenomenon isassociate with the name of Karl R. Popper, who was one of the first to pay attention to the relationship between knowledge and language.
In his scientific works, the researcher approached the study of knowledge and the formation of ideas about it in the language system from the point of view of the Darwinian theory of evolution, natural selection.
The evolutionary epistemology of Karl R. Popper is, in fact, that its main problems should be considered the change, improvement of language and the role that it plays in the formation of human knowledge as such. The scientist calls another problem the determination of the method by which the consciousness of mankind selects the main linguistic phenomena that determine knowledge about reality.
Another connection to biology
This section of philosophy is directly related to other areas of biology. In particular, genetic epistemology, the author of which is considered to be J. Piaget, is based on the psychological aspect.
Researchers of this school consider knowledge as a set of mechanisms based on reactions to certain stimuli. By and large, this concept is an attempt to combine the currently available exact sciences and data obtained from experimental studies of an ontogenetic nature.
Knowledge and society
It is quite natural that the range of interests of epistemology is directed not at any individual, but at society as a whole. Knowing everythinghumanity, passed down from generation to generation, becomes the main object of study of this science.
For the ratio of individual and collective knowledge, social epistemology is responsible for the most part. The main subject of interest in this case is collective, general knowledge. Epistemological problems of this kind are based on all kinds of sociological research and observations of the cultural, religious, scientific ideas of society as such.
Doubt and reflection
Modern science, whatever one may say, has made just a huge number of breakthroughs in certain areas of human life. What is space travel worth? Needless to say, bloodletting was the main method of treatment just a few centuries ago, and modern diagnostics allows us to determine the likelihood of a problem long before its immediate occurrence.
All this is based on scientific knowledge obtained as a result of various practices, experiments and actions. In fact, all the technological progress that we can observe today is based on ideas about certain phenomena.
That is why epistemology (the sciences related to it, we discussed above) is of particular value. The study of the mechanisms of directly scientific knowledge is especially important and interesting from the point of view of this section of philosophy, since it is they (mechanisms of this kind) that push humanity forward.
Modern epistemology is constantly evolving, like any other science. The range of its interests is becoming wider, the conclusions drawn are becoming clearer as a result of the presence of a much larger experimental base. Deeper and deeper becomes a person's understanding of knowledge as such, its features, norms and mechanisms of action. The world in which we live is becoming more and more known by man…
