EMPIRICISM • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Empiricism

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noun

Empiricism n.

The method or practice of an empiric; pursuit of knowledge by observation and experiment.

Specifically, a practice of medicine founded on mere experience, without the aid of science or a knowledge of principles; ignorant and unscientific practice; charlatanry; quackery.

(Metaph.) The philosophical theory which attributes the origin of all our knowledge to experience.

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Etymology of 'Empiricism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Empiricism" Quotes from Famous Books

... Reformers of the sixteenth century to justify their rejection of certain doctrines were used by later generations to prepare the way for still greater inroads upon the contents of Christianity, and finally to justify an attitude of doubt concerning the very foundations on which Christianity was based. Empiricism, Sensualism, Materialism, and Scepticism in philosophy, undermined dogmatic Christianity, and prepared the way for the irreligious and indifferentist opinions, that found such general favour among the educated and higher classes ...

— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... sometimes colitis. It is declared that constipation is its primary symptom; and that diarrhea is one of its secondary symptoms, resulting from constipation. There is a legion of secondary symptoms of proctitis, all of which medical empiricism considers and denominates causes. As constipation is such an every-day complaint of almost everybody one meets, it will not tax our imagination unduly to conceive how it may be a frequent cause of diarrhea, which is only Nature's ...

— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... experience. We can discover any actual law of connection between phenomena only by observing that they occur in succession. We cannot get beyond or behind the facts—and therefore intuitionism in this sense is not opposed to empiricism, but a warrant for empirical conclusions. An 'intuition,' briefly, is an unanalysable belief. Brown asserts that a certain element of thought has not been explained, and assumes it to be therefore inexplicable ...

— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... that all the great "a priori" metaphysical systems have been driven by their pure logic to discredit the "substantiality" of the soul, just as they have been driven to discredit the personality of God, ought, one would think, where "radical empiricism" is concerned, to be a still stronger piece of evidence ...

— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

Words linked to "Empiricism" : philosophical doctrine, philosophical theory, empiricist philosophy, experimentalism, empirical, investigating, empiric, sensationalism