Interview with a witness

This interview initiates an epistemological discussion on how current methodology is insufficient to gain knowledge on how to engineer the Semantic Web. It argues that the rate of progress is not up to par with that of natural sciences, that the community should think in terms of hypotheses and how their external validity must be established within larger theories, that also needs to be formulated. It then initiates a discussion that testing against a reality that does not yet exist is difficult, but for that reason, work on epistemology is needed. To motivate this work, it reviews some prominent directions in philosophy of science.