Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know? — Theodore Bikel
But epistemology is always and inevitably personal. The point of the probe is always in the heart of the explorer: What is my answer to the question of the nature of knowing? — Gregory Bateson
It is the faithfulness of God that allows epistemology to model ontology. — John Polkinghorne
Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is-insofar as it is thinkable at all-primitive and muddled. — Albert Einstein
We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong — Gregory Bateson
Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage. — Auguste Comte
[Knowledge is governed not by] a theory of knowledge, but by a theory of discursive practice. — Michel Foucault
Knowledge is the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified observations. — Sayings
I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. — Nicolaus Copernicus
Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to human kind is that if science grounded in observation. — Auguste Comte
Self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. — John Taylor Gatto
Knowledge is in the observer, not the observed. — Naval Ravikant
Logical positivists have never taken psychology into account in their epistemology, but they affirm that logical beings and mathematical beings are nothing but linguistic structures. — Jean Piaget
Short Epistemological Quotes
In genetic epistemology, as in developmental psychology, too, there is never an absolute beginning. — Jean Piaget
Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise only from epistemological confusions. — Raymond Smullyan
Accuracy of signal and free flow of information define sanity in my epistemology. — Robert Anton Wilson
The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology. — Imre Lakatos
Descartes's epistemology is a special case of Aristotle's virtue ethics. — Ernest Sosa
Too often faith is used as an epistemological device to avoid the hard labor of straight thinking. — Edward John Carnell
Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology. — Ian Hacking
All the best essays are epistemological journeys from ignorance or curiosity to knowledge. — Geoff Dyer
I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed. — Max Born
Our problem, from the point of view of psychology and from the point of view of genetic epistemology, is to explain how the transition is made from a lower level of knowledge to a level that is judged to be higher. — Jean Piaget
A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology. — H. L. Mencken
Agnosticism is epistemologically self-contradictory on its own assumptions because its claim to make no assertion about ultimate reality rests upon a most comprehensive assertion about ultimate reality. — Cornelius Van Til
If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don't give me Ayn Rand. — Paul Ryan
But the myth of power is, of course, a very powerful myth, and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it. It is a myth, which, if everybody believes in it, becomes to that extent self-validating. But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to various sorts of disaster. — Gregory Bateson
Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations among objects; they are indifferent to the replacement of objects by others as long the relations don't change. Matter is not important, only form interests them. — Henri Poincare
There should be no element of slavery in learning. Enforced exercise does no harm to the body, but enforced learning will not stay in the mind. So avoid compulsion, and let your children's lessons take the form of play. — Plato
Unless the structure of the nucleus has a surprise in store for us, the conclusion seems plain — there is nothing in the whole system of laws of physics that cannot be deduced unambiguously from epistemological considerations. — Arthur Eddington
The quality of the human that precludes identifying the individual with the class is 'metaphysical' and has no place in empiricist epistemology. The pigeon hole into which a man is shoved circumscribes his fate. — Max Horkheimer
If man has learned to see and know what really is, he will act in accordance with truth, Epistemology is in itself ethics, and ethics is epistemology. — Herbert Marcuse
The principal agent is the object itself and not the instruction given by the teacher. It is the child who uses the objects; it is the child who is active, and not the teacher. — Maria Montessori
When I think of the most able students I have encountered in my teaching - I mean those who have distinguished themselves not only by skill but by independence of thought - then I must confess that all have had a lively interest in epistemology. — Albert Einstein
Behind the epistemological scholasticism of empirio-criticism one must not fail to see the struggle of parties in philosophy, a struggle which in the last analysis reflects the tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society. — Vladimir Lenin
To reject revelational epistemology is to commit yourself to defending the truth of autonomous epistemology. — Greg L. Bahnsen
Too often preachers want to deal with people simply at the level of publicly accessible reason. We participate with them in their own epistemology. But this is not New Testament preaching. We have a message that is not from this world; it is from God. We don't know it by our own cleverness; we know it because God has revealed it. — Mark Dever
I woke up to the world of science when my high school chemistry teacher introduced me to the elegantly ordered periodic table. — Isadore Singer
A majority vote is not an epistemological validation of an idea. Voting is merely a proper political device--within a strictly, constitutionall y delimited sphere of action--for choosing the practical means of implementing a society’s basic principles. But those principles are not determined by vote. — Ayn Rand
I'm not creating art that starts with politics or starts with ethics. I feel I am a conceptual artist because my art is more concerned with epistemology than ethics or politics or even aesthetics. — Vik Muniz
What we're starting to see is a quantum biology, it being applied in biology and cosmology and a host of other sciences, because it does really pertain to how we know. It really helps bring epistemology, which is how do we know what we know, out of the realm of philosophy and brings it into the realm of science. — Edgar Mitchell
In Calvinism and sectarianism man became more and more transformed into an abstract moral subject, as in Descartes he was considered an epistemological subject. — Paul Tillich
We cannot fight against collectivism, unless we fight against its moral base: altruism. We cannot fight against altruism, unless we fight against its epistemological base: irrationalism. We cannot fight against anything, unless we fight for something--and what we must fight for is the supremacy of reason and a view of man as a rational being. — Ayn Rand
Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research. — Jurgen Habermas
An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct," the answer can only be, "All of them." — Ken Wilber
It is characteristic of the epistemological tradition to present us with partial scenarios and then to demand whole or categorical answers as it were. — Avrum Stroll
The world of physics is essentially the real world construed by mathematical abstractions, and the world of sense is the real world construed by the abstractions which the sense-organs immediately furnish. To suppose that the "material mode" is a primitive and groping attempt at physical conception is a fatal error in epistemology. — Susanne Katherina Langer
Tony learns about the ontologically promiscuous, the epistemologically anxious, the ethically dubious, the metaphysically ridiculous. — Damon Horowitz
Indeed, this epistemological theory of the relation between theory and experiment differs sharply from the epistemological theory of naive falsificationism. — Imre Lakatos
To attempt this would be like seeing without eyes or directing the gaze of knowledge behind one's own eye. Modern science can acknowledge no other than this epistemological stand-point. — Wilhelm Dilthey
Dickens didn't have access to any other epistemologies other than those prevailing in Britain. But a novelist today cannot plausibly claim ignorance of his society's manifold connections with the wider world, the fact that prosperity and security at home, for instance, often depend on extensive violence and exploitation abroad. — Pankaj Mishra
The indispensability argument seeks to assimilate the epistemology of metaphysical statements to the epistemology of statements that are obviously empirical. I think it fails to achieve this goal. The argument does not refute the Carnapian thesis that scientific theories and metaphysical claims differ epistemologically - observations can provide evidence for the former, but not for the latter. — Elliott Sober
In the history and literature courses I took, epistemological questions came to interest me most. What makes one explanation of the French Revolution better than another? What makes one interpretation of "Waiting for Godot" better than another? These questions led me to philosophy and then to philosophy of science. — Elliott Sober
About 70% of what I've written about is centered on the clashes and conformities between the emerging life and physical sciences and older metaphysical frameworks in the 17th and 18th centuries. The other 30% consists of one-off essays or researches into other intriguing contemporary topics such as visual experience, aesthetics, social justice issues, and the epistemology of moral knowledge. — Catherine Wilson
The data on which philosophical theorizing is based are rather the intuited contents themselves, concerning the various thought experiments. At least that is so outside the epistemology of the a priori. — Ernest Sosa
Philosophers need not much use the word 'intuition' or the concept of intuition, except when they happen to be working on the epistemology of the a priori. — Ernest Sosa
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of epistemological quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about epistemological to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of epistemological quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
