Friday, 18 January 2013

Epistemology



Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge; the study of knowledge and justified belief.

I have just come across the word in ‘Galileo's Dream’ by Kim Stanley Robinson – a brilliant book which has given me, altogether, nineteen new words and a lot of quotations.  And that is not counting a number of words in Italian or of a very scientific nature that I didn’t look up.

3 comments:

  1. That sounds very advanced... The definition makes my brain hurt.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I thought of you while I was reading this and I thought it isn't a book that would prove easy for anyone who was reading it as a foreign language. It's hard to guess a lot of the words from their context; both Latin and Italian feature in it; some words are used in a science fiction way - i.e. as things that don't exist in our day and age; and there is a fair bit of Medieval religion and science. All in all not the easiest of books.

      Delete
    2. Science fiction is not really my favourite genre. Nor too much "science" at all, to be quite truthful ;)

      Delete