ABSTRACT
Epistemological questions have been at the forefront of western metaphysics in modernity. This strong emphasis on questions of knowledge coincides with the rise of the idea and practice of science, based on the notion that method could somehow guarantee truth; that it could minimise at least the role of ideas and so keep 'metaphysics' away from real, hard, empirically acquired knowledge. One big concern with modern epistemology concerns questions of how certain people can be about the knowledge that they have. This epistemological question is dramatically put on the scene by Descartes in the seventeenth century. Modern and contemporary science theory is likely to be very modest about claims to truth, preferring to suggest that the quest for knowledge is necessarily incomplete and that the knowledge that one does lay claim to may be subject to complete revision. Such theory is also likely to concede that science can not be strictly separated from metaphysics.
