Etymology

epistemology

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Today it means: 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. Full definition →

Ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη
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The story

  1. Ancient Greek · derived fromἐπιστήμη“science, knowledge”
  2. English todayepistemology

From Ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistḗmē, “science, knowledge”), from ἐπίσταμαι (epístamai, “to know”) + -λογία (-logía, “study or logic of”), from λόγος (lógos, “speech, language”). The term was introduced into English by Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier (1808–1864).

Words from the same roots

Ancient Greekἐπιστήμη all →

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Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.