Epistemology

Epistemology in Time versus Time in Epistemology

The perspective of time can facilitate the classification of different approaches to the problematic [Page 425]of epistemology. An examination of the history of epistemology suggests a double sense: history of epistemology considered as a philosophical discipline and history of knowledge considered as our abilities to know ourselves and the surrounding world. This first approach can be called epistemology in time. The second line—time in epistemology—is dependent on the remarkable development of the natural sciences since the beginning of the 20th century, when many traditional philosophical notions—space, causality, determinism, movement, and time—appeared in the new context of modern physics. The category of time, in particular, is a frequent theme and subject of analyses and speculations. Time in epistemology is a prototypical problem of modern epistemology that exposes different approaches and a possible delimitation of the relation between philosophy and science.

The term epistemology, in use since the 19th century, has never been unequivocal. In Continental philosophy, epistemology—the study of knowledge—is often related to the philosophy of science, which focuses on scientific methods and the results of natural sciences especially. According to French philosophy, the term epistemology is often inappropriately identified with the theory of knowledge (gnoseology), considered as analysis and philosophical criticism of scientific knowledge. In their new thinking based on recent scientific discoveries, epistemologists try to describe the development of particular scientific disciplines from different points of view.

However, epistemology is not a theory of science. Epistemology does not deal with concrete problematics of particular scientific fields and their procedures; rather, it is concerned with questions that are provoked by these scientific procedures. When physicists search beyond their measured data—to discover something hidden, to explore to what extent their work is a conventional language game, or to wonder whether notions and concrete objects have something in common—they have left the field of natural science and have begun to deal with epistemological questions.

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