“All epistemology begins in fear - fear that the world is too labyrinthine to be threaded by reason; fear that the senses are too feeble and the intellect too frail; fear that memory fades, even between adjacent steps of a mathematical demonstration; fear that authority and convention blind; fear that God may keep secrets or demons deceive.” — Peter Galison
From the Greek “episteme”, for a principled system of understanding, something like scientific knowledge.