📂 3.3 Knowledge and Observation

How can we tell the difference between what is really happening around us in the world and what just appears to be going on? This is the fundamental problem of epistemology, or the philosophical study of knowledge. As modern science first got off the ground starting around the year 1500, scientists and philosophers puzzled over this problem. Are things as they appear to us, or are they very different than this, and how on earth can we tell? It is these issues that underlie this section’s discussions.