The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 29. The book is alphabetized by the whole headings of entries, as distinct from the first word of a heading. Hence, for example, abandonment comes before a priori and a posteriori. It is wise to look elsewhere if something seems to be missing. At the end of the book there is also a useful appendix on Logical Symbols as well as the appendices A Chronological Table of Philosophy and Maps of Philosophy. | 260 epistemology genetic knowledge and intelligence in the individual. Piaget thought that genetic epistemology could be distinguished from developmental psychology but the distinction as he made it was not clear. It might be argued however that just as the prime concern of ordinary epistemology is to show how knowledge is possible so the aim of genetic epistemology should be to show how the acquisition and growth ofknowledge is possible. This is a matter for genuine philosophical concern. The first instance of such a philosophical theory only partially successful is to be found in the last chapter of Aristotle s Posterior Analytics and is a response to an argument in Plato s Meno that learning and the acquisition of new knowledge is impossible. . D. W. Hamlyn Experience and the Growth of Understanding Lon- don 1978 . epistemology history of. Epistemology or the theory of knowledge is that branch of philosophy concerned with the nature ofknowledge its possibility scope and general basis. It has been a major interest of many philosophers almost from the beginnings of the subject. Often but not always these philosophers have had as their main preoccupation the attempt to provide a general basis which would ensure the possibility ofknowledge. For this reason it is sometimes said that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the age of epistemology in that Descartes then introduced what is sometimes termed the search for certainty seeking a sure foundation for knowledge and was followed in this by other philosophers of the period. To this end Descartes employed his method of doubt a form of systematic scepticism in order to ascertain what could not be doubted. He found this in his notorious proposition Cogito ergo sum I think therefore I am which he thought established the existence of the self as a thinking thing although it seems on the face of it to imply only that a thought must have a thinker and what that thinker must be like is another matter as is the
