Having obtained the ability to think, man also obtained the need to discover the nature of things and the world around him. Studying it, obtaining new and new facts, enlarging his knowledge, man started to think not only about the principles of the functioning of the surrounding world, but about the ways his percepts the information and about the nature of the acquired knowledge. At that moment, philosophy in general, and epistemology in particular, appeared. “Epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources?”(Epistemology, 2005, para. 1). People were not satisfied with the unknown nature of knowledge they obtained, giving their own theories in order to explain the process.
Rationalism was one of the first attempts to classify knowledge and the way people obtain it. The main thesis of it states – “some propositions in a particular subject area, are knowable by us by intuition alone; still others are knowable by being deduced from intuited propositions” (Rationalism vs. Empiricism, 2013, para. 12). The main source of obtaining knowledge is proclaimed to be human mind, which can make prepositions on the basis of some facts or intuition, which tends to be one of the main issues in the rationalism. With the help of deduction, man can make obvious conclusions and obtain knowledge about the things, he has never seen.
Empiricism, on the contrary, states that our feelings can be the only reliable source of getting knowledge – “we have no source of knowledge or for the concepts other than sense experience” (Rationalism vs. Empiricism, 2013, para. 30). Consequently, only having acquired definite knowledge about the subject, only having seen it and having obtained the sensual experience about it, we can gain some true knowledge. Sensual experience is the key point in the empiricism, and the only way to obtain new ideas. Empiricism denies the human ability to form new, clear and, what is the most important, true image about the nature of things just making suppositions, based on mans thoughts and conclusions, not on the sensual experience.
Two polar ways of the world perception and cognition appeared. People wanted to understand the way they get knowledge. That is why, debates between rationalists and empiricists had been going on through the centuries. Over the years, in epistemology their dispute obtained some new character. The new problematic issues like the nature of our reality and the existence of God appeared. Their debates came to metaphysics level. Still having the human knowledge as the main topic for consideration, they, however, discuss more abstract terms as freewill and relation between the mind and body (Rationalism vs. Empiricism, 2013)
Epistemology, as the main branch of the philosophy, helps people to discover not only the world around them, but to reveal some peculiarities of the way they study this world. Constant debates between rationalism and empiricism only lead to the further development of the human thought and better understanding of the nature of things.
Reference List
Rationalism vs. Empiricism.(2013). Web.
Epistemology.(2005). Web.