epistemology

noun

1. (uncountable)The branch of philosophy dealing with the study of knowledge; the theory of knowledge, asking such questions as "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", "What do people know?", "How do we know what we know?", "How do we know it is true?", and so on.

   “Some thinkers take the view that, beginning with the work of Descartes, epistemology began to replace metaphysics as the most important area of philosophy.”

   “[P]hilosophers of the time [early 20th century] were primarily concerned with epistemology and the foundations of the sciences; they often spoke as if we were separated from the real world by a screen of "representations" or "sense-data"; they tended to regard our approach to the world as one of disinterested observation.”

2. (countable)A particular instance, version, or school thereof; a particular theory of knowledge.

   “In his epistemology, Plato maintains that our knowledge of universal concepts is a kind of recollection.”

   “I believe that 'intuitionism' is usually, and rightly, taken to mean Brouwer's epistemology of mathematics, which is unrelated to the origin or content of topos theory.”