ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Shared Religious Foundations of Education: Islam & Christianity Epistemology Epistemology is taken from the Greek word episteme, which means knowledge and science. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge; the branch of philosophy that inquiries into the nature and possibility of knowledge. It deals also with the scope and limits of human knowledge, and with how it is acquired and passed.

It also investigates related notions, such as perception, memory, proof, evidence, belief and certainty (Mounter, 2005). Thus it can be said the central question includes the origin of knowledge, and the place of experience in generating knowledge, and the place of reason in doing so; the relationship between knowledge and impossibility of error; the possibility of universal skepticism, and the changing forms of knowledge that arise from conceptualizations of the world (Blackburn, 2005).

It is said in Christianity that we have been endowed with the ability to gain some reliable knowledge about reality (Peterson, 1986). It is believed in Islam that it is possible for man to know and recognize, i.e. to have knowledge and cognition.

Motahhari (1989) says in this regard that one of the reasons of possibility of man’s cognition from the viewpoint of the Qur’an is this fact that it invites the humans to cognition, then it is evident that the Qur’an does not invite men to an impossible thing. It is also believed in Islam that knowing and cognition is not a material process.

Sadr (translated by Marashi Shushtari, undated) says that cognition is neither material nor as a phenomenon penetrated or reflexes into a material (like brain), because it is contrary to the material rules.

Status of Knowledge and Cognition The following issues are among the reasons why Islam believes that knowledge and cognition are very important: Adam was prostrated by the God’s angels when all of the facts of the universe were instructed to him: “ And we taught Adam the names, all of them .” (Qur’an, 2:31) It meant by the word “names” in the above verse, “the named” i.e. all that the entire name is applied to it, that is the being itself and its truth.

That is the reason the word “name” has been interpreted as “the named” in this verse. It also follows from this verse that the aptitude and potential of knowledge and cognition has been trusted in man’s nature and it can be concluded that the humans can take efforts to actualize these potentials.