- ontology - the metaphysical study of the nature of being and existence
- metaphysics - the philosophical study of being and knowing
- epistemology - the philosophical theory of knowledge
- a priori - derived by logic without observed facts
- a posteriori - derived from observed facts
- rationalism - the philosophical doctrine that knowledge is acquired by reason without resorting to experience
- empiricism - the philosophical doctrine that knowledge derives from experience
- relativism - the philosophical doctrine that all criteria of judgement are relative to the individuals and situations involved
From Wikipedia:
Ontological perspectives
Social scientists adopt a number of approaches to ontology. Some of these are:
- Realism - the idea that facts are “out there” just waiting to be discovered;
- Empiricism - the idea that we can observe the world and evaluate those observations in relation to facts;
- Positivism - which focuses on the observations themselves, attending more to claims about facts than to facts themselves;
- Grounded theory - which seeks to derive theories from facts;
- Engaged theory - which moves across different levels of interpretation, linking different empirical questions to ontological understandings;
- Postmodernism - which regards facts as fluid and elusive, and recommends focusing only on observational claims.
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