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Epistemology

Discover how epistemology—the study of knowledge and belief—applies to software engineering. Learn to differentiate induction from deduction, recognize biases, and apply first principles thinking for clearer decision-making and building reliable mental models.

What is epistemology?

Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief.

Epistemology addresses the question: How do we know what we think we know?

There are many approaches to the study of certaintyCertainty is the epistemic property that a person has no rational grounds for doubting a particular belief or set of beliefs., so I will blithely ignore most of them and contrast two: Induction vs. Deduction.

Deductive reasoning

Given a base set of general facts, we build up as high as we can to useful general conclusions.

Inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning is the opposite; we take specific real-world observations and generalize them to general truths. This is problematic in SO many ways, and ...