ABSTRACT
It is impossible that the domain of hospitality could have escaped the influence of the scientific revolution that has for the past 300 years provided western society with a ‘new’ system of knowledge. However, the low status afforded to the study of hospitality in comparison with other domains of study has until the latter half of the twentieth century tended to constrain the development of a scientific self-understanding of the field. The chapter will not, however, attempt a tour de force of all that scientific research in hospitality has discovered. It will, rather, seek to reach behind the claims of scientists and in particular social scientists to truths about hospitality. In this chapter, therefore, an attempt will be made to contribute to that self-understanding through an examination of debates in the philosophy of science. A major question that must be asked in all domains of scientific study is called the epistemological question or put more simply a question that asks ‘How can we know hospitality?’
