The Word Epistemology

The word epistemology

Introduction

The word “epistemology” refers to the study of source of knowledge. Episteme means knowledge or understanding, and -ology refers to the study of something. Epistemology deals with that how do we create and disseminate knowledge. This essay sheds light on the epistemology of essays and papers we wrote during the course “English Composition”. We select the two essays “Legalizing Marijuana” and “Acquisition and Logistics” for discussion on their epistemology. In addition to the sources used, it also highlights the experiences and methodology used by us for writing.

Discussion

The very first step for writing any essay or paper is to develop an understanding of the given topic. It can be accomplished by brainstorming the key points relevant to the topic, and then selecting few for research and analysis. It is the topic which lets us know that what sources to use and to what extent. The source, which tends to be the best for one topic, may not serve for the other in the same way. It can, therefore, clearly be stated that epistemology for each piece of writing is unique. Therefore, we discuss the essays under consideration separately along with their epistemology.

Legalizing Marijuana

As clear from the topic, this paper had to deal with law and drugs. It required the persuasive arguments so that it could convince the US law makers to legalize the drug Marijuana. Since we had to write in favor of such a controversial topic, it gave us hard time to select and justify the points.

We needed to collect enough information about the topic, before we could start writing in favor; therefore, we decided to progress in a sequential way. We started with collecting information about the drug itself, its biological influences, history of use, the relevant laws of legalization, laws of not legalization, and reasons of not legalizing.

In this modern age, epistemology for any essay crucially depends on online resources, such as databases, books. As the internet has become a reliable resource of getting the latest information on the lowest cost, we relied heavily on the open source research papers and online books.

We started with studying about Marijuana, a legalized drug in some states of US for medical purposes (www.govtrack.us), While completely illegal in the others. We searched for the constituents of the drug, associated merits and demerits of using it.

History of Marijuana is quite interesting, as it reveals that Marijuana is being used for medications for centuries. The undeniable point is that being non-toxic it may not cause death in case of overdose.

We studied research papers to search for reasons of considering Marijuana as illegitimate in many states (Abrams et al., 2003).

After completing the initial finding and information collection session, we started searching for the articles written in favor of the topic as well as against the topic. As this topic has been a controversial since past few years, we were able to find many articles which contained supportive arguments, along with justifications (Morgan, ...