Epistemology and Ontology

["Judith Rosen" <***>]

These are two of the words my father used that I had a lot of trouble
totally comprehending which meant that we discussed this at length.  Part of
the trouble is that he used these words differently than their dictionary
definition. According to the dictionary: Epistemology means "the nature or
science that investigates the origin, methods, nature, and limits of
knowledge.

My father's meaning was more along the lines of: What you can know about a
thing (system) and what you can learn about how it works by investigating it
scientifically. In other words, a system's material basis, structure and
organization.

Ontology in the dictionary: "the branch of metaphysics dealing with the
nature of being or reality"

Again, my father's meaning was markedly different: Ontology relates to how a
thing (system) came into being... which incompasses everything from origin
of "life, itself" questions, through evolutionary questions,  to fetal
development questions.

Interestingly, they define the word Metaphysics in my dictionary (Websters
New Universal, unabridged) as follows: Greek roots "meta" meaning after, and
"physika" meaning physics; "after those things relating to external nature,
after physics... The brance of philosphy that deals with first principles
and seeks to explain the nature of being or reality (ontology) and of the
origin and structure of the world (cosmology); it is closely associated with
a theory of knowledge (epistemology)..."

 My father's usage most likely has to do with the Greek origins of the
words. He was very knowledgeable of the roots of language and his vocabulary
was formidable.  Epistemology comes from episteme, meaning "knowledge", and
logos, meaning "discourse".  The Greek root for ontology is ontos, meaning
"to be". He tended to ignore dictionary definitions that have come into
common usage if they were based on some mistake-- like reductionism, in this
case. He would say you can't know how a thing comes into being from learning
everything about what it is made of, how it's put together,  and how it
works. Therefore, he would argue that the word epistemology should not have
"origin" in its definition. He would also likely argue that Ontology should
not be regarded purely as a philosophy, either.

He believed that you could differentiate a simple system from a complex one
by how it's ontology related to its epistemology. In a simple system, its
epistemology subsumes (swallows) its ontology. In complex systems, the two
things are completely disconnected. But science tries to treat complex
systems as if they were simple ones and everyone here knows what he thought
of that.

He said the trouble with the field of medicine, for example, is that we
don't really know the human body's full epistemology and know even less
about its ontology. On top of that, diagnosis deals with epistemology and
therapies deal with ontology. (Actually, my father felt there was a lot of
trouble with modern medicine! As a diabetic, he was well acquainted with
whole teams, droves, herds, gaggles of doctors... and his irritated comment
to me was, "I am more than just a pancreas!")

Judith
Website address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com/