Epistemology

Research

The branch of philosophy concerned with what can be known and how — positivist (objective, measurable) vs interpretivist (constructed, context-dependent).

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — “Epistemology”, Ram Neta (first published 14 December 2005; substantive revision 26 October 2024) plato.stanford.edu accessed 22 September 2026

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry by Ram Neta begins from the word’s parts: “‘Episteme’ can be translated as ‘knowledge’ or ‘understanding’ or ‘acquaintance’, while ‘logos’ can be translated as ‘account’ or ‘argument’ or ‘reason’.” Epistemology is, literally, the account of knowledge. The positivist-versus-interpretivist framing this entry uses is how research-methods teaching applies epistemology to choosing a study design; it is a downstream use of the philosophical field, not its definition.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is cited because it carries a named author and a dated revision for each entry, so the claim is attributable to a person on a date — which is the test this lexicon applies to reference sources, and the reason an open-edit encyclopedia is not used. The application to research practice above is this lexicon’s reading.

Deeper treatment: this term also has a full entry in the Business Library.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).