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Philosophy Custom Essays samples
Free English Essays, Online Custom Papers, College Research Papers, Original Custom Term Papers, Custom-Written Essays, Book Reports, College Essays, Case Studies
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|  Empiricism |
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| Empiricism is the philosophical doctrine that all human knowledge comes at first from senses and experience. Empiricism denies that humans have innate ideas or that anything is knowable prior to any experience.
Empiricism is contrasted with continental rationalism, epitomized by Rene Descartes. According to the rationalist, philosophy should be performed via introspection and a priori deductive reasoning. Names associated with empiricism include St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.
It is generally regarded as being at the heart of the modern scientific method, that our theories should be based on our observations of the world rather than on intuition or faith; that is, empirical research and a posteriori inductive reasoning rather than purely deductive logic.
Empirical is an adjective often used in conjunction with science, both the natural and social sciences, which means the use of working hypotheses which are capable of being disproved using observation or experiment (i.e.: ultimately through experience).
In a second sense empirical in science may be synonymous with experimental. In this sense, an empirical result is an experimental observation. In this context, the term semi-empirical or semi-empirical is used for qualifying theoretical methods which use in part basic axioms or postulated scientific laws and empirical (experimental) results. Such methods are opposed to theoretical ab initio methods which are purely deductive and based on first principles. This terminology is particularly important in theoretical chemistry. |
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