Philosophy & ThoughtGreek → English
Epistemic
/ˌɛpɪˈstiːmɪk/adjective
Relating to knowledge or to how well a belief is justified.
The Greek roots
ἐπιστήμη
epistḗmē
knowledge, understanding
Literally: “having to do with knowledge”
Follow a root:ἐπιστήμη3 words
The story of the word
ἐπιστήμη is knowledge that stands up, from ἐπίσταμαι, to stand over a thing and so understand it, and Plato sets it against δόξα, mere opinion. The adjective stayed rare in English until modal logic needed it: G. H. von Wright's 1951 scheme sorted modal operators into alethic, deontic and epistemic, and Jaakko Hintikka's Knowledge and Belief of 1962 turned epistemic logic into a field. Philosophers now attach it to anything that can be well or badly grounded.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → philosophical coinage → English
Same family
epistemologyepistemeepistemological
In a sentence
Calling it an epistemic problem means we lack the evidence, not that the world is undecided.
The paper argues that trust does real epistemic work.