The word comes from the Greek, episteme (knowledge) and logos (theory). Epistemology is a discipline or philosophical branch that addresses scientific research and its product, scientific knowledge, its classes and its conditioning, its possibility and its reality, the relationship it has with the researcher, entering into topics such as history, culture and the context of people. It is also known as the philosophy of science.
Epistemology deals with the definition of knowledge and related concepts, the sources, the criteria, the types of possible knowledge and the degree to which each is true; as well as the exact relationship between the one who knows and the known object. Unlike formal logic, whose object is the formulation of thought, and Psychology, whose relationship with knowledge is on a scientific level, epistemology deals with the contents of thought, its nature and meaning.
Epistemology has been a vertebral problem of philosophy since Descartes until the beginning of this century, passing through dispersed approaches such as rationalism, empiricism, idealism, positivism, transcendenceism, irrationalism-vitalism, and that of philosophical analysis.
Until half a century ago epistemology was only one chapter of the theory of knowledge or gnoseology (nature and scope of knowledge). The semantic, existing, axiological, ethical and other problems that arise both in the course of scientific inquiry and in meta-scientific reflection had not yet occurred.
Today epistemology has become an important area of philosophy, both conceptually and professionally. There are numerous chairs in epistemology, sometimes alongside logic or the history of science.
