Epistemology

Epistemology (from the Greek epistēmē, "knowledge") is the branch of philosophical inquiry that concerns human knowledge, including its nature, origin, scope, and veracity. For the likes of Plato, real knowledge could be obtained by the intellect's apprehension of the eternal "form" of a thing, with knowledge of particular instances being deductions from such forms. For Aristotle, though, humans could only apprehend things empirically and sensorily, working inductively through discursive reasoning to arrive at genuine knowledge. Within a theological framework, epistemology also touches involves the relationship of the (human) intellect to faith: What can be known (and truly so) by human reason alone, and how and where does divine revelation enter in? For Wesley, humans come to know anything through the senses, with physical senses providing the intellect sensory data, and the spiritual senses providing the soul spiritual data.