Methodsobtaining knowledge

Knowledge may originate or be derived fromfollowing origins or methods:

• Revelation, even Divine revelation, which may be directly from God or some other spirit, perhaps mediated by being included inbook such asBible.
• Authority Knowlege based on authority may rely uponreputationan individual such as Aristotle or Einstein or perhaps on institutional authority such as that ofCatholic Church or Oxford University. Note that an authority may adopt knowledge upon other criteria such as divine relelation or observation as well as upon authority. Authority may havepolitical basis insense that some political process, perhaps involving status as well as simple voting, peer review, or comment. Thisfamiliarparticipantsacademia.
• Reason or logic. Taking other knowledge as data, by logical operations knowledge can be inferred. For exampletheoretical construct,electron,derived by logical inferences from observationsexperiment. Such knowledge, being derivative, can not be better thanknowledge upon which itfounded.
• Observation, or experience. This may be more or less sophisticated ranging fromsimple, "I saw"carefully designed controlled experimentation.

Compare

• Epistemology

Reference

• Internet-Encyclopedia article, January 3, 2003, used underGFDL