Few days ago I was going through the first part of Robert
Pirsig's celebrated book - Zen and Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance . Though I
haven't completed the book yet, the lines mentioning Phaedrus's knife and how
everything in the world can be described
through the lenses of classical or
romantic angle, brought me back similar concept in philosophy of ontology, epistemology,
methodology and metaphysics. These terms, that any PhD Scholar or Research
student dealing with science in general would have encountered during their
scholarship, bring forth several confusion and debates. I have no intention in
stoking it further as the argument has been ongoing since time of Plato. If we
were to Google the terms , Ontology describes what things are , while epistemology
explains the way we know things. On the other hand metaphysics deals with abstract
concept of why things are as they are while methodology provides tool to gain
the knowledge. Main difficulty in comprehending these terms can be attributed
to fact that they are sometimes so closely related and often overlapping one
can hardly segregate two. So since I love analogy I try to shed some confusion
with an example. Since I am no way a practitioner philosopher correct me if I
am wrong.
Exhibit: A leaf in a tree
Ontology: What is the
color of leaf? It is green because empirical (data from observation rather than
logic) evidence says so
Epistemology: How do we know the color of leaf is green? A
child might answer because my mother says so. If you are botanist then you may
say because chlorophyll in leaves make it green.
Methodology: Verify the color of leaf using the spectral
analysis and determine that the photons emanating from leaves have corresponding
frequency in green part of visible spectrum
Metaphysics: Is the leaf
green in real or does it appear so only to me? Or does color green appear same to me
as well as others.
Based on the cited example alone one can see how science and
any other philosophical discourse for matter as simple as color of leaf can
have such wide and varied interpretation. So if you are vigorously debating any scientific
or philosophical point of view be aware that the way you look at the things may not
be right answer in actuality.
