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Epistemology is the study of how we know things. My Webster's unabridged dictionary defines epistemology as “The theory or science that investigates the origin, nature, methods and limits of knowledge.” Every model also has an implicit epistemology, at both the level of technology and methodology.
Some epistemologies are very simple; they rely on some authority—a person, book or other original source from which the model originates. Most such epistemologies do not have an independent way to test the validity of the model, and typically such methodologies do not develop or change significantly over long periods of time. The basic tenets of astrology, for instance, have not changed much in several thousand years—though practitioners are happy to use an ephemeris created by a very different scientific methodology/technology/epistemology to calculate the positions of the planets at a particular time and place on the earth.
The scientific method, in contrast, includes a rigorous way of testing and revising methodology, an explicit recognition of the inherent uncertainty in all knowledge, and the testing of this knowledge. As Hans Vaihinger wrote in The Philosophy of “As If,” “Truth is only the most expedient error.” This was echoed by Richard Bandler who said, “Everything we tell you is lies—but they are very useful lies.” This aspect of the epistemology of science essentially says “I don't care if it's 'true;' I only care if it's true enough to yield predictions about the world that can be used.” The following poem says it even better:
Not truth, nor certainty. These I forswore
In my novitiate, as young men called
To holy orders must abjure the world.
“If ..., then ...,” this only I assert;
And my successes are but pretty chains
Linking twin doubts, for it is vain to ask
If what I postulate be justified,
Or what I prove possess the stamp of fact.Yet bridges stand, and men no longer crawl
In two dimensions.And such triumphs stem
In no small measure from the power this game,
Played with the thrice-attenuated shades
Of things, has over their originals.
How frail the wand, but how profound the spell!
In this epistemology, called radical empiricism by Karl Popper, “truth” is a relative, analog, function rather than something absolute, and digital, and it is measured simply by how useful an understanding is.
To summarize, every model has three levels (whether explicit or not):
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