Epistemology: Epistémè

Epistemology:
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/epistemology
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
“the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and
validity”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology :
In other words, epistemology primarily addresses the following questions: "What is knowledge?", "How is
knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?”
Epistémè:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episteme :
As distinguished from techne, the Greek word
or episteme is often translated as knowledge or
science.
Michel Foucault used the term épistémè, […] in his work The Order of Things to mean the historical a
priori that grounds knowledge and its discourses and thus represents the condition of their possibility
within a particular epoch. In subsequent writings, he made it clear that several epistemes may co-exist and
interact at the same time, being parts of various power-knowledge systems. […]
Foucault's episteme is not merely confined to science but to a wider range of discourse (all of science itself
would fall under the episteme of the epoch). […] Foucault's epistemes are something like the
'epistemological unconscious' of an era; the configuration of knowledge in a particular episteme is based on
a set of fundamental assumptions that are so basic to that episteme so as to be invisible to people operating
within it.
http://www.changingminds.org/explanations/critical_theory/concepts/episteme.htm :
Episteme:
In The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Foucault identified how all periods in
history are based not on absolute truth but unspoken assumptions of what is right and real.
These founding ideas, or epistemes, form unspoken truths on which all discourse is based.
Epistemes tend to change occasionally and radically.
http://www.kuwi.euv-frankfurto.de/de/lehrstuhl/sw/sw2/mitarbeiter/dr__Matthias_Rothe/protokolle/protokoll_3.doc :
Episteme: enthält nur Elemente eines Typs: Kategorien. In "Die Ordnung der Dinge" benutzt Foucault
diesen Begriff, um einander ablösende Rationalitäten zu konstruieren. Es geht ihm hier darum den Glauben
an eine kontinuierliche Wissensanhäufung zu dekonstruieren und Erkenntnisgeschichte als
diskontinuierliche Geschichte zu rekonstruieren. F. will zeigen, dass man immer 'anders weiß'. Es sind
lokale, partielle Rationalitäten, die dem zugrunde liegen. Die Episteme als Erkenntnis leitende Schemata,
sind je andere und vereinfacht als Regeln, die das Nachdenken über sich und die Welt leiten, zu verstehen.
Peter Brooker: A Glossary of Cultural Theory, 2nd ed. London: Arnold 2002. (p. 88) :
Epistème – A term introduced by Michel Foucault (1970). It denotes a historical epoch or, more narrowly,
an intellectual era, and the prevailing epistemology (ways of knowing) and criteria that characterize and
give this era systematic form. […] Foucault’s concept is more specific than descriptions of the ‘spirit’ of an
age but more totalizing than uses of the term IDEOLOGY with which it is sometimes thought to have
affinities. An episteme describes the regularities in forms of knowledge over a whole epoch (the ‘classical’
or ‘modern’, for example) whereas a description such as ‘bourgeois ideology’ names the DOMINANT
ideology of a specifically capitalist social and economic order. […]