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     Let me go back to the Aristotelian notion of a hierarchy
of knowledge, a notion that has survived into modern times,
that surfaced most pointedly in the science hierarchy
espoused by Auguste Comte, and that still informs educational
policy and practice today, at least to the extent that
medical students are expected to know biochemistry and
biology, chemistry and physics, or that physics students are
expected to have a good grasp of mathematics.

     If one posits such a hierarchy, one will assume for each
discipline some more fundamental knowledge by which that
discipline may be explained or illuminated. If one refers to
such more fundamental knowledge as theoretical knowledge, or
simply as theory, one can avoid the term epistemology.  What
matters is the reference to some fundamental stratum of
knowledge, which purports to explain the disciplines
scientific and otherwise subsumed under it.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
