Salient Features of Empiricism

Empiricism

 

Salient Features of Empiricism 

Introduction:

The term empiricism is derived from the ancient Greek word emporia, meaning “experience”. 

Empiricism is a philosophical school holding that knowledge can only be (or is primarily) gained from sensory experience. Empiricism is often contrasted with rationalism. Rationalism emphasizes the role of reason and logic in discovering the nature of the world, while empiricism instead emphasizes the use of the senses. In Western philosophy, empiricism became particularly popular during the 1600s and 1700s.

 Definition: 

“Empiricism incorporates the idea that genuine knowledge can be tested by experience and that claims of knowledge must be observable. Scientific laws involve statements of recurring patterns of experience and a scientific explanation is an instance of a scientific law. Prediction is achievable and science is objective as it separates testable factual statements from value judgments” (Benton and Craib, 2001). 

“Empiricism is the theory that human knowledge comes predominantly from experiences gathered through the five senses. In empiricism, concepts are spoken of as a posteriori or ‘from the latter’ meaning from the experiences”.

“Empiricism is a reliance on experience as the source of ideas and knowledge.

More specifically, empiricism is the epistemological theory that genuine information about the world must be acquired by a posteriori means so that nothing can be thought without first being sensed”. Prominent modern empiricists include Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Mill. In the twentieth century, empiricism principles were extended and applied by the pragmatists and the logical positivists. Empiricist philosophers:

 ● Thomas Hobbes: For whom knowledge comes from experience, which is constituted by the set of degrees of knowledge, that is: sensation, perception, imagination, and memory. 

● John Locke: For whom the human being is like a blank slate (blank sheet) and gets knowledge from the moment he lives and, consequently (according to the blank slate metaphor), being scribbled (or marked by these experiences). 

● Francis Bacon: For whom the philosophical and scientific method must start from the inductive method, which arises based on the observation of the repetition of events. 

● David Hume: For whom empirical knowledge is the result of the set of practical experiences that we have acquired with the experiences, and these are a kind of goal to determine the way the human being understands the world and what he knows about it. 

Features/ Characteristics of Empiricism: 

These are the following features of empiricism: 

● Perception is the only source of knowledge.  Experimental science is a paradigm of knowledge

Individuals have no innate knowledge. Empiricists use the inductive method. Empiricist does not believe in intuition. Empiricists favor the quantitative research method. Two categories of knowledge by David Hume Perception is the only source of knowledge/ knowledge a Priori: 

Empiricists have always claimed that sense experience is the ultimate starting point for all our knowledge. The senses, they maintain, give us all our raw data about the world, and without this raw material, there would be no knowledge at all. Perception starts a process, and from this process come all our beliefs. In its purest form, empiricism holds that sense experience alone gives birth to all of our beliefs and all of our knowledge. A classic example of an empiricist is the British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). 

Empiricists support their philosophy by describing situations in which a person’s lack of sense experience stops her from full understanding. For example, how can you explain the flavor of pineapple to someone who has never tasted one? All ideas of the human mind can be divided into two parts: 1) simple, and 2) complex. Simple ideas are based only on perception, like color, size, shape, etc. Complex ideas are formed when simple ideas are combined. Experimental science is a paradigm of knowledge: 

Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially evidence found in experiments. It is an essential part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than relying solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. 

Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, says that "knowledge is based on experience" and that "knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to constant revision and falsification". Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method. The empiricist emphasis on evidence, especially as discovered in experiments, makes empiricism very important for science. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning or intuition. 

Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method. Hence, science is considered to be methodologically empirical in nature Individuals have no innate knowledge: Empiricists discount the notion of innate ideas or innatism (the idea that the mind is born with ideas or knowledge and is not a “blank slate” at birth). They argue that ideas are only acquired through experience, and not through innate ideas. Empiricists reject the concept of innate knowledge because, for example, if children had this knowledge, why do they not show it? Like why does a baby need to learn to walk or talk, why does he or she not have this knowledge at birth? The empiricists believe that only with experiences could one form simple ideas, which could then be combined into complex ideas. Empiricists use the inductive method: 

The empiricists rely much more on inductive rather than deductive reasoning. In order to build a more complex body of knowledge from the direct observations of sensory perception, induction or inductive reasoning (making generalizations based on individual instances) must be used. Francis Bacon, whose Novum Organum Scientiarum (1620) is an explanation of the inductive method of interpreting nature. He argues that inductive procedure rather than deductive reasoning should incorporate the basis of knowledge generation. Empiricists do not believe in intuition: The idea that people can learn through reasoning independently of the senses or through intuition is rejected. Stated differently, knowledge can only be derived a posteriori, i.e. through sensory experience. Innate ideas and superiority of knowledge do not exist. Empiricism favors quantitative research methods: although it can be used with quantitative or qualitative research or a mixture of the two approaches. It's leaning towards quantitative research is demonstrated by the fact that it can be associated with positivism. A strong distinction is made between facts (objective) and values (subjective). Sense data is the ultimate objectivity, uncontaminated by value or theory. This ties in closely with the positivist paradigm. 

Two categories of knowledge by David Hume: 

David Hume brought to the Empiricist viewpoint extreme Skepticism. David Hume argued that all of the human knowledge can be divided into two categories: relations of ideas (e.g. propositions involving some contingent observation of the world, such as "the sun rises in the East") and matters of fact (e.g. mathematical and logical propositions), and that ideas are derived from our "impressions" or sensations. In the face of this, he argued that even the most basic beliefs about the natural world, or even in the existence of the self, cannot be conclusively established by reason, but we accept them anyway because of their basis in instinct and custom.

Conclusion: 

Empiricism is an important part of the scientific method because theories and hypotheses must be observed and tested to be considered accurate. Empiricists tend to be skeptical that anything can be known for certain and, therefore, they tend not to believe in dogmas or absolute truths.

Keywords;  Empiricism