"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

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.

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    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.

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

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