Epistemology

Epistemology is an area of inquiry in the discipline of philosophy. It is generally concerned with the study of the sources, forms, and conditions of knowledge. Whereas ontology seeks to contemplate the question of the nature and modes of being and asks questions about what exists and in what form it exists, epistemology addresses the problem of how we can get to know these different possibilities of existence. Thus, epistemology is concerned with the relationship between “what there is in the world that we can get to know” (objects, materials, etc.) and “how we can get to know it” (the methods of acquiring knowledge).

Numerous approaches to explaining the relationship between knowledge and the world have been established, most notably empiricism, rationalism, realism, pragmatism, and constructivism, all of which had significant impacts on the discipline of geography and the conceptualization of its core concepts such as space and place. In general, these approaches can be divided into foundational and nonfoundational epistemologies. These two approaches have different consequences for the ways in which geographic knowledge is acquired and disseminated.

Until recently, foundationalism was the dominant epistemological underpinning of all geographic inquiry. It begins with the assumption that knowledge develops in the human mind and that a tangible reality exists in the world “out there.” It argues that there are correct (legitimate) and incorrect (illegitimate) ways in which the human mind can gain knowledge of the world—of how it can get the world into the mind. In general, the most accepted approach to bringing the world into the mind has been the scientific method. It is the process by which scholars collectively and repeatedly attempt to construct a reliable, coherent, and nonarbitrary representation of the world. To do so, scientists seek to lay aside personal beliefs and traditions in their interpretation of nature and culture and to instead use standardized and widely accepted methods to examine reality and develop an abstract theoretical model of real entities. Ultimately, the scientific method aims at reducing bias or preconceptions by the researcher when developing a theory or testing a hypothesis. It assumes that undeniable facts and clear and distinct ideas and concepts—a certain detectable order—exist in the world and that humans can bring this world into the mind by continuously examining their surroundings with their senses. Furthermore, this knowledge is consistently reevaluated, questioned, and updated. Knowledge of the world is composed of what individuals gather, compare, exchange, and combine into a logical, testable, and transparent apprehension or model of this world. Space is conceptualized as a tangible, objective, quantifiable, qualifiable, and verifiable entity that can be described and measured. All foundational epistemologies argue that geographic theories, abstractions, descriptions, or models of reality can directly represent the reality of the world out there—outside of the human mind. Although present throughout most of geography's disciplinary history and still of notable importance, foundational epistemologies had the greatest influence on geography following the quantitative revolution of the 1950s and the subsequent influence of positivism as the dominant mode of scientific enquiry.

In contrast to such scientific approaches that assume reality to be a knowable objective entity out there and open to inquiry by the human mind, nonfoundational epistemologies negate such possibility of knowledge acquisition. Whereas foundational epistemologies seek to establish grand theories that can universally explain human and natural phenomena, nonfoundational epistemologies not only regard such attempts as impossible but also deny the objective and unbiased character of the scientific method. Feminism, [Page 137]Marxism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism all offer different critiques of foundational epistemologies that especially target the role of the researcher in the scientific process and emphasize the limitations of language providing adequate representations of the world. For example, both feminist and Marxist philosophies stress that the process of generating scientific knowledge is far from being governed by objective, value-free research; rather, it is guided by political ideologies that represent the interests of dominating groups such as men, political majorities, and ethnic groups. Subsequently, the main goal of feminist and Marxist geographies is to decode the ways in which spaces and places have been inscribed with ideological representations. They show that space is not innocent but rather always a value-laden entity that is guided by the vested interests of certain groups within a society and that must be examined as such. Furthermore, these critical approaches denounce foundational epistemologies, especially positivism and the scientific method, as a decidedly male invention that overlooks the different ways in which knowledge can be gained. In the past, male-dominated and supposedly objective research based on the scientific method often has left unexamined the voices of marginalized and oppressed people such as women, certain racial groups, and sexual minorities. Poststructuralist and postmodern critiques of foundationalist epistemologies then add another point of contention. Whereas foundationalist epistemologies assume that the language, texts, and visual representations of reality can supply us with adequate models and theories about the world around us, nonfoundationalist approaches argue that such an a priori assumption is illusory. Language as a tool of communicating geographic knowledge is always providing us with incomplete representations of the world; whenever something is said, something else is left silent or silenced. All nonfoundational epistemologies argue that geographic theories, abstractions, and descriptions or models of reality can never directly represent the reality of the world out there—outside of the human mind. Instead of the construction of grand theories and universal models of geographic patterns and behaviors, they argue for the deconstruction of such models to reveal their often biased and ideologically colored representations of the world. In addition, nonfoundationalist epistemologies favor the construction and representation of a diversity of local knowledges; they prefer microexplanations and acknowledge the perpetual incompleteness of scientific explanations. Ultimately, nonfoundational epistemologies seek to overcome the need for an epistemology as a whole and reject the possibility of certainty and universality in scholarly inquiries.

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