the strange sounding words ontology epistemology and methodology often appear in scientific literature or university lectures have you ever asked yourself what these terms mean and how they relate to each other in this video I'll explain the individual meanings and the connection between ontology epistemology and methodology this will equip you well for discussions in any academic field and help you better understand these basic philosophy of science Concepts in my opinion understanding these three terms is the key to taking your academic Journey to the next level and now without further Ado welcome to shribe as you've likely noticed we are delving into the realm of philosophy of science this field which is part of philosophy serves as a metadiscipline with implications for all other scientific Fields the terms ontology epistemology and methodology are are inherently philosophical and concern how we understand science this is crucial because without philosophical underpinnings scientific work as you know it wouldn't be possible for instance when you're developing a survey questionnaire for your Master's thesis which 150 individuals will fill out and then you conduct statistical tests in SPSS this very typical way of conducting research adheres to specific philosophical assumptions these assumptions shape the research approach you are following regardless of whether you are aware of them or not if you are conducting interviews for your research for example your work will be rooted in a different ontology a different epistemology and of course a different methodology without an understanding of the philosophical foundations you might find yourself caught of God when someone knowledgeable in this area poses a targeted question A fitting metaphor for the relationship between these three terms is an iceberg your methodology and methods are on the surface and visible for example you describe them in your methods section ontology and epistemology on the other hand lie beneath the surface intricately connected to the visible part of the iceberg in a PhD thesis students are sometimes asked to make a statement about their ological and epistemological standpoint but in a regular academic paper you wouldn't do that because these standpoints shine through implicitly but if you are aware of them you can fully understand what you're doing and know what others are talking about when they mention these things so let's take a look behind the curtain ontology resides at the deepest point underwater this concept pertains to the philosophical exploration of being itself or how things exist in other words IT addresses how we understand reality this might initially sound quite confusing why would there be differences in this regard well there can be plenty of differences let's say you're an atomic physicist working at CERN with a particle accelerator your scientific understanding of reality likely follows the belief that 1 + 1 equal 2 and that the atoms observable in the particle accelerator are objectively real so if a colleague or an alien were to look into the particle accelerator the atoms would still be just as real independent of you as the scientist this ontology following the tenants of objectivism is accepted by the majority of researchers in the Natural Science es admittedly it would be quite challenging to make progress otherwise however when we delve into the realm of social sciences Things become a bit more difficult here we don't observe atoms or other natural scientific phenomena rather we study social phenomena these aren't influenced by the laws of physics but are shaped by human interactions can we then assume the same ontology here some say yes in Psychology for instance a natural scientific ontology has also prevailed it is widely believed that psychological phenomena can be generalized and are objectively real similar to the Natural Sciences this in turn affects which methods for acquiring knowledge are accepted but we'll get to that shortly other social scientists are dismayed by this ontology for them it's evident that social phenomena are in the eye of the beholder and socially constructed how we as humans perceive reality is closely tied to how we interpret it so there's no objective reality but rather a subjective one this ontology falls under the philosophical stream of constructivism since the 1970s a third prominent position has emerged in the social sciences which somewhat mediates between the two also known as critical realism anyway you can ask yourself is a chair a chair because it has four legs and a back rest or is a chair a chair because we use it for sitting the answer to this question can tell you more about the ontology through which you see the world now let's move a bit beneath the surface to explore epistemology here the question is how is it even possible to acquire knowledge about the world what methods of gaining knowledge are accepted in a given scientific discipline when our CERN scientist conducts measurements in the particle accelerator she is convinced that new knowledge can be generated through this process additionally she is aware of the nature of this knowledge that is concrete tangible and objective this epistemology is also known as positivism in the realm of social sciences things again become more difficult here knowledge could just as easily be characterized as personal subjective and unique this in turn has significant implications for how we as researchers can acquire new knowledge and which methods we can or cannot accept this epistemological position is also called interpretivism as you may have noticed there is always a specific epistemology that aligns with an underlying ontology a positivist epistemology corresponds to an objectivist ontology an interpretivist epistemology aligns with a constructivist ontology there are of course other positions like critical realism but that would be the subject of another video now before we get to the meaning of the term methodology please consider to give this video a like And subscribe to the channel if you like this type of content the philosophical assumptions you make specifically the ontology and epistemology that shape your understanding of reality and knowledge determine the methodology you employ in your research broadly speaking there are once again two opposing positions in this area that dominate the social sciences these methodological approaches are the quantitative and the qualitative research paradigms traditionally a quantitative approach aligns with the objectivist positivist position while a qualitative approach corresponds better with the constructivist interpretivist position at this level of the iceberg however the possibilities are much more flexible at least in most social sciences there are methods that combine both approaches or crossover creating methodological pluralism throughout the history of science there have been relatively intense debates and disputes about which philosophical assumptions are the right ones for each discipline fortunately today it is possible to be successful with less dogmatic positions and contribute to the diversity of a discipline by acknowledging the value of every position