A branch of philosophy and metascience that examines the epistemological foundations, assumptions, and implications of scientific knowledge—asking not just what science discovers but how scientific claims are justified, what counts as evidence, how theories are validated, and what kind of knowledge science actually produces. The
epistemology of science investigates the standards, methods, and criteria that distinguish scientific knowledge from other forms of knowing; the
relationship between observation and theory; the nature of scientific explanation; the problem of induction; the status of unobservable entities; and the grounds for scientific realism or anti-realism. It also examines how epistemological standards vary across disciplines and historical periods, how
scientific consensus is achieved, and how scientific knowledge relates to other knowledge systems. The epistemology of science is science reflecting on its own knowing—the study of how science knows what it claims to know.
Example: "Her
epistemology of science work challenged the
assumption that all scientific knowledge is fundamentally similar—showing that what counts as 'evidence' in
particle physics looks very different from what counts as 'evidence' in evolutionary biology, and that imposing uniform standards distorts both."
