Word.ws English Dictionary

epistemological turn

epistemological turn noun: in the history of Western philosophy, the shift in philosophical attention from the classical and medieval focus on themes of metaphysics to a primary focus on themes and issues relating to human knowledge, usually considered to have occurred during the period from Descartes (1596-1650) through Kant (1724-1804).

Noun

epistemological turn (plural epistemological turns)

  1. In the history of Western philosophy, the shift in philosophical attention from the classical and medieval focus on themes of metaphysics to a primary focus on themes and issues relating to human knowledge, usually considered to have occurred during the period from Descartes (1596-1650) through Kant (1724-1804).
    • The core of Kant's "epistemological turn" is the claim that the distinction between epistemic and ontological categories is an illusion.1967, Wilfrid Sellars, “Some Remarks on Kant's Theory of Experience”, in The Journal of Philosophy, volume 64, number 20, page 634
    • He spends several of the book's eight chapters giving an account of "the epistemological turn" of modern philosophy, dealing primarily with the thought of Descartes, Locke, and Kant.1980, Robert Greene, "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (review of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature by Richard Rorty), MLN, vol. 95, no. 5, p. 1387

Forms of epistemological turn

pluralepistemological turns

Questions about epistemological turn

What does epistemological turn mean?
Epistemological turn means in the history of Western philosophy, the shift in philosophical attention from the classical and medieval focus on themes of metaphysics to a primary focus on themes and issues relating to human knowledge, usually considered to have occurred during the period from Descartes (1596-1650) through Kant (1724-1804).
What part of speech is epistemological turn?
Epistemological turn is a noun.
What is the plural of epistemological turn?
The plural of epistemological turn is epistemological turns.

Words near epistemological turn in the dictionary

  1. epistemocracy
  2. epistemolog
  3. epistemologic
  4. epistemological
  5. epistemological dualism
  6. epistemological turn
  7. epistemological turns
  8. epistemologically
  9. epistemologies
  10. epistemologist
  11. epistemologists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: epistemological turn (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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