The following essay will discuss the terms of epistemology, theory, and methodology and which basis –– epistemological consideration or technical and practical issues –– is more efficient for research method.
Epistemology is one of the most significant branches of philosophy (Klein, 2005). It studies the method of acquiring knowledge. The main question it answers is “How do we know?”. It investigates into the nature and grounds of the knowledge itself (Yeganeh, 2004). Epistemology focuses on how people differentiate true from false. Modern epistemology mainly concerns a dispute between empiricism and rationalism (Сline, 2016). Epistemologies and research methods frequently include metaphysics (Chatterjee, 2011)
Political epistemology is the study of political ideas and knowledge—as changing factors affecting political actions as objects of political debates and products of political institutions and behavior.
Political epistemology concerns the question how politics frames the issues of knowledge. It promotes a new view on the relationship between theory and practice and seeks a criterion of truth from the perspective of epistemology that is attentive to the meaning determining political conditions. There is a need to state a normative criterion of truth for epistemic and political reasons. The political epistemology articulates the criterion of truth. The project of political epistemology states the standard criterion of truth observing it as the relation of reciprocal support among the reality’s structural and superstructural elements (Shomali, 2006).
The main goal of normative political epistemologists is to study if the politics who make decisions can be expected to know what they need to know if there is a necessity to make wise public policy (Friedman, 2014).
There are, in general, many different sources of getting knowledge. They can be divided into four categories. The first one is intuitive knowledge. It is based mainly on intuition, beliefs, faith and so forth. In intuitive knowledge human feelings take a significant place in comparison to reliance on facts. Authoritarian knowledge is the second one. It is based on the information retrieved from books, experts, research papers and other academic sources. Logical knowledge applies logical reasoning to create a new knowledge. And the las one is empirical knowledge. Its basis is objective facts, established and being able to demonstrate. All of these sources may be involved in research process may integrate all of these sources of knowledge within a single study (Dudovskiy, 2016).
Methodology concerns the theoretical analysis of the methods of study. The use of term methodology is different and contradictory. However, in spite of the differences, the method may be viewed as a distinction criterion between scientific and non-scientific approaches in terms of creation knowledge. Methods are guiding principles which create knowledge (Yeganeh, 2004).
In his “Epistemology, Theory, and Methodology in Knowledge Organization: Toward a Classification, Metatheory, and Research Framework” Tennis discusses epistemology, theory, and methodology from the perspective of Knowledge Organization (KO). He states that in KO people make implied epistemic statements concerning knowledge of concepts, systems, acts and entities. By these means one creates knowledge and one’s epistemic stance prescribes the kind of knowledge.
Then, the author comes to the enumeration of some names of such stances such as positivistic, pragmatic, empiricist, referential, realist, rationalist and so forth. Any of the given stances makes make statements about how knowledge is gathered, presented and what kind of it may be created through research. They do so due to having a systematic view on reality, knowledge of it and its meaning (Tennis, 2008).
The theory is a unifying narrative about some phenomena generally. This narrative may predict one's view on the world while others just express them (Tennis, 2008).
Tennis assumes that methodology combines epistemic stance and the investigation methods which are named techniques by him. Epistemology is present in both theory and methodology.
It is explained by the importance of The presence of epistemology in both theory and methodology lies in the importance of marking the kind of knowledge claims produced by means of research narrative (theory) and research techniques (methodology). As the author states, the methodology is the machine that is used for the creation of knowledge but its operation does not provide that the following finding will be acceptable. The validity, reliability, and utility of the newly created knowledge and its nature, in general, is present in epistemology.
As it may be summed up from the example concerning the Knowledge Organization, epistemology’s most efficient use is in mixture with methodology and theory because of its presence in both. Thus, there is no possibility to conclude which basis is more efficient in choosing research methods.
References
Chatterjee, A 2013, ‘Ontology, epistemology, and multimethod research in political
Cline, A 2014, ‘What is Epistemology? Philosophy of Truth, Knowledge, Belief.
Dudovskiy, J 2016, Epistemology. Retrieved on August 14, 2016 from
epistemological and methodological issues in cross-cultural research’, Journal of Comparative International Management, 8, 1.
Friedman, J 2014, ‘Political epistemology’, Critical Review, 26, pp. 1–2.
http://research-methodology.net/research-philosophy/epistomology/#_ftn2
Klein, PD 1998, Epistemology.
organization: toward a classification, metatheory, and research framework’, Knowledge organization, 35, 2/3, pp. 102-112.
Science’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 43, 1, pp. 73-99.
Shomali, A 2006, The project of political epistemology, politics and the criteria of
Tennis, JT 2008, ‘Epistemology, theory, and methodology in knowledge
truth.
Yeganeh, H, Su, Z, & Chrysostome, EVM 2004, ‘A critical review of
