Empirical Quotes

Because our brains make a mountain out of a molehill of uncertainty, we tend to prefer competitive risk because it feels more secure. But the empirical evidence says that market risk is less risky than competitive risk. ~ Whitney Johnson

Neuroscience in no longer simply the science of the nervous system. It is the actual empirical science of self-awareness. ~ Abhijit Naskar

[Skinner] does not invoke other events, processes, or mechanisms which are hypothesized or invented for the purpose of mediating between behavior and its empirical determinants. This omission is sometimes misconstrued as a denial that mediating mechanisms exist; they obviously do, they are obviously neurological and they are also obviously themselves lawful. ...The argument [against employing them as part of scientific practice] is simplicity itself... [Skinner] considers such theoretical terms unnecessary; they may generate research whose only usefulness is to disconfirm the mediating entity or redefine it without increasing our knowledge of behavior's controlling variables; they can become the absorbing focus of an inquiry and so deflect attention from behavior itself; they can become a "refuge from the data". ~ Kenneth MacCorquodale

Companies that fail to communicate a sense of WHY force us to make decisions with only empirical evidence. This is why those decisions take more time, feel difficult or leave us uncertain. ~ Simon Sinek

Art was, for Poe, the only method by which one could penetrate the shapeless empirical world in the search for order, and ~ Edgar Allan Poe

It is no longer acceptable to simply assert your moral beliefs; you have to provide reasons for them, and those reasons had better be grounded in rational arguments and empirical evidence or else they will likely be ignored or rejected. ~ Michael Shermer

If and when all the laws governing physical phenomena are finally discovered, and all the empirical constants occurring in these laws are finally expressed through the four independent basic constants, we will be able to say that physical science has reached its end, that no excitement is left in further explorations, and that all that remains to a physicist is either tedious work on minor details or the self-educational study and adoration of the magnificence of the completed system. At that stage physical science will enter from the epoch of Columbus and Magellan into the epoch of the National Geographic Magazine! ~ George Gamow

The word zen itself is a Japanese mispronunciation of the Chinese word ch'an, which, in turn, is a Chinese mispronunciation of the Sanskrit dhyana, meaning "contemplation, meditation." Contemplation, however, of what?

Let us imagine ourselves for a moment in the lecture hall where I originally presented the material for this chapter. Above, we see the many lights. Each bulb is separate from the others, and we may think of them, accordingly, as separate from each other. Regarded that way, they are so many empirical facts; and the whole universe seen that way is called in Japanese ji hokkai, "the universe of things."

But now, let us consider further. Each of those separate bulbs is a vehicle of light, and the light is not many but one. The one light, that is to say, is being displayed through all those bulbs; and we may think, therefore, either of the many bulbs or of the one light. Moreover, if this or that bulb went out, it would be replaced by another and we should again have the same light. The light, which is one, appears thus through many bulbs.

Analogously, I would be looking out from the lecture platform, seeing before me all the people of my audience, and just as each bulb seen aloft is a vehicle of light, so each of us below is a vehicle of consciousness. But the important thing about a bulb is the quality of its light. Likewise, the important thing about each of us is the quality of his consciousness. And although each may tend to ide ~ Joseph Campbell

If you read philosophical texts of the tradition, you'll notice they almost never said 'I,' and didn't speak in the first person. From Aristotle to Heidegger, they try to consider their own lives as something marginal or accidental. What was essential was their teaching and their thinking. Biography is something empirical and outside, and is considered an accident that isn't necessarily or essentially linked to the philosophical activity or system. ~ Jacques Derrida

The new coherent picture is not yet available. With all their immense empirical success, G(eneral)R(elativity) and Q(uantum)M(echanics) have left us with an understanding of the physical world which is unclear and badly fragmented. At the foundations of physics there is today confusion and incoherence. ~ Carlo Rovelli

As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones. ~ Steven Pinker

I'm all for empowerment and education, but the empirical evidence is that it doesn't work. That's why I say make it easy. ~ Richard Thaler

That is, a system starts with a group of interrelated propositions which involve reference to empirical observations within the logical framework of the propositions in question. ~ Talcott Parsons

Moreover, an archetype exists in the nation's consciousness that connects student loan debt with irresponsibility. This is a result of well-publicized accounts of loan defaults in decades past in which students took out loans with no intention of ever paying them back and simply filed for bankruptcy after graduation. This perception was sufficiently strong that in the 1970s, Congress was convinced to remove bankruptcy protections from student loans. However, according to a March 2007 paper by John A. E. Pottow of the University of Michigan, this perception had a fatal flaw: "The fatal problem is that there are no empirical data to buttress the myth that students defraud creditors any more than other debtors."1 In fact, it was shown that when student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy, there was a less than 1 percent bankruptcy rate among student debtors.2 Nevertheless, this misconception has been so often repeated that it is now indelibly etched in the public's mind. ~ Alan Collinge

There is a marvelous ambiguity to the ego: on the one hand it is an ordinary part of the world, one of many things that inhabit it. It occupies space, endures through time, has physical and psychic features, and interacts causally with other things in the world: if it falls, it falls like any other body; if it is pushed, it topples over like any other thing; if treated with chemicals, it reacts like any living organism; if light rays hit its visual organs, it reacts electronically, chemically, and psychologically. 'I' am a material, organic, and psychological thing. If we were to take the self simply as one of the things in the world, we would be treating it as what can be called the empirical ego.

On the other hand, this very same self can also be played off against the world: it is the center of disclosure to whom the world and everything in it manifest themselves. It is the agent of truth, the one responsible for judgments and verifications, the perceptual and cognitive 'owner' of the world. When considered in this manner, it is no longer simply a part of the world; it is what is called the transcendental ego.

The empirical and transcendental egos are not two entities; they are one and the same being, but considered in two ways. ~ Robert Sokolowski

But it must not be forgotten that ... glass and porcelain were manufactured, stuffs dyed and metals separated from their ores by mere empirical processes of art, and without the guidance of correct scientific principles. ~ Justus Von Liebig

Like the pioneering Muslim scientists, Al Bukhari insisted on an empirical, organized method in the science of fiqh and hadith ~ Firas Alkhateeb

The empirical is very important, but merit is inherent and not acquired. A university is massively important because you can see where you stand naturally in the ranks, and try yourself out, but education is just reading and understanding what you read. ~ William Monahan

Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

There is a radical dualism between the empirical nature of man and its moral nature. ~ African Spir

In the absence of either a widely accepted theory of language learning or a solid empirical base for classroom practice, teachers and learners have always been, and will always be, vulnerable to drastic pendulum swings of fashion, the coming and going of various unconventional and unlamented "Wonder Methods" being an obvious recent example. The sad truth is that after at least 2,000 years, most language teaching takes place on a wing and a prayer - sometimes successfully, but often a relative failure. ~ Michael H. Long

Memeticists have to give empirical evidence to support the claim that, in the micro-processes of cultural transmission, elements of culture inherit all or nearly all their relevant properties from other elements of culture that they replicate. ~ Dan Sperber

The Bible never encourages blind faith. God provides both rational and empirical proofs to confirm His word. ~ Domenic Marbaniang

The part of our being (mentality, feeling, physicality) which is free of all control let's call our 'unconscious'. Since it's free of control, it's our only defense against institutionalized meaning, institutionalized language, control, fixation, judgement, prison.

Ten years ago, it seemed possible to destroy language through language: to destroy language that normalizes and controls by cutting that language. Nonsense would attack the empire-making (empirical) empire of language, the prisons of meaning.

But this nonsense, since it depended on sense, simply pointed back to the normalizing institutions.

What is the language of the 'unconcious'? (If this ideal unconscious or freedom doesn't exist: simply pretend that it does, use fiction, for the sake of survival, for all of our survival.) Its primary language must be taboo, all that is forbidden. Thus an attack on the institutions of prison via language would demand the use of language or languages that are which aren't acceptable, which are forbidden. Language, on one level, constitutes a series of codes and social and historical agreements. Nonsense doesn't per se break down the codes; speaking precisely that which the codes forbid breaks the codes. ~ Kathy Acker

True science is at length disencumbered of the empirical determinations which had accumulated in the course of many centuries. ~ Franz Cumont

Socrates claimed famously that one never loses by doing the right thing. Stephen Post and his contributors claim, a little less boldly, that at least the generous will, probably, stay healthy - and, improving on Socrates, they support this claim with careful empirical science, impressive for its comprehensive detail. Here ethics and religion join science and enjoin us to be more caring and healthy. A seminal work, with an urgent message. ~ Holmes Rolston III

Poetry is related to philosophy as experience is related to empirical science. Experience makes us acquainted with the phenomenon in the particular and by means of examples, science embraces the whole of phenomena by means of general conceptions. So poetry seeks to make us acquainted with the Platonic Ideas through the particular and by means of examples. Philosophy aims at teaching, as a whole and in general, the inner nature of things which expresses itself in these. One sees even here that poetry bears more the character of youth, philosophy that of old age. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

It was civilization itself which inflicted this wound upon modern man. Once the increase of empirical knowledge, and more exact modes of thought, made sharper divisions between the sciences inevitable, and once the increasingly complex machinery of State necessitated a more rigorous separation of ranks and occupations, then the inner unity of human nature was severed too, and a disastrous conflict set its harmonious powers at variance. The intuitive and the speculative understanding now withdrew in hostility to take up positions in their respective fields, whose frontiers they now began to guard with jealous mistrust; and with this confining of our activity to a particular sphere we have given ourselves a master within, who not infrequently ends by suppressing the rest of our potentialities. While in one a riotous imagination ravages the hard-won fruits of the intellect, in another the spirit of abstraction stifles the fire at which the heart should have warmed itself and the imagination been kindled. ~ Friedrich Schiller

It must be possible for an empirical system to be refuted by experience. ~ Karl Popper

How do you know there's some pocket of love at the center of the universe? How do you know we're not just fucking random and we live and we die and that's the end and nothing matters? What's your empirical evidence? ~ Sophie Oak

Like the end, the myth of the beginning overlaps the cycle of birth and death, unfolding like a Möbius strip in ceaseless continuum, which is the paradox that sits above and beyond intellectual explanation in the realm where empirical logic halts. ~ Gwendolyn Taunton

The kind of approach I take is different from much of experimental philosophy. Although the experimental philosophers and I are certainly in agreement about the relevance of empirical work to philosophy, a good deal of their work is devoted to understanding features of our folk concepts, and in this respect, at least, I see them as making the same mistake as those armchair philosophers who are interested in conceptual analysis. ~ Hilary Kornblith

A second possible approach to general systems theory is through the arrangement of theoretical systems and constructs in a hierarchy of complexity, roughly corresponding to the complexity of the "individuals" of the various empirical fields ... leading towards a "system of systems." ... I suggest below a possible arrangement of "levels" of theoretical discourse ... (vi) ... the "animal" level, characterized by increased mobility, teleological behavior and self-awareness ... ~ Kenneth E. Boulding

Although signs may be found in everything that comes to us, as though a river at our doorstep carried these messages on its surface, the Quran (like other sacred books) speaks in terms of empirical experience, since it is intended to endure through the ages and cannot bind itself to the 'scientific' theories of any particular time. Its images are the phenomena of nature as they appear to us in our experience - the rising and setting of the sun, the domed sky above and the mountains, which are like weights set upon the earth. Scientific observations change according to the preconceptions of the observer and the instruments at his disposal, and the speculations which blinkered human minds construct on the basis of these observations change no less swiftly. But man's experience of the visual universe does not change. The sun 'rises' for me today as it 'rose' for the man of ten thousand years ago. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton

There are many other escapes from the empirical, external self, which might seem to be, but are not, contemplation. For instance, the experience of being seized and taken out of oneself by collective enthusiasm, in a totalitarian parade: the self-righteous upsurge of party loyalty that blots out conscience and absolves every criminal tendency in the name of Class, Nation, Party, Race or Sect.. Yet it is precisely these ersatz forms of enthusiasm that are "opium" for the people, deadening their awareness of their deepest and most personal needs, alienating them from their true selves, putting conscience and personality to sleep and turning free, reasonable men into passive instruments of the power politician. ~ Thomas Merton

Our understanding of what the mind is matters deeply. Our most basic philosophical beliefs are tied inextricably to our view of reason. Reason has been taken for over two millennia as the defining characteristic of human beings. Reason includes not only our capacity for logical inference, but also our ability to conduct inquiry, to solve problems, to evaluate, to criticize, to deliberate about how we should act, and to reach an understanding of ourselves, other people, and the world. A radical change in our understanding of reason is therefore a radical change in our understanding of ourselves. It is surprising to discover, on the basis of empirical research, that human rationality is not at all what the Western philosophical tradition has held it to be. But it is shocking to discover that we are very different from what our philosophical tradition has told us we are. ~ George Lakoff

Even in recent times, the empirical evidence does not support the claim that trade liberalization or incentive neutrality leads to faster growth. It is true that higher manufacturing growth rates have been typically associated with higher export growth rates (mostly in countries where export and import shares to GDP grew), but there is no statistical relation between either of these growth rates or degree of trade restrictions. Rather, almost all of successful export-oriented growth has come with selective trade and industrialization policies. In this regard, stable exchange rates and national price levels seem to be considerably more important than import policy in producing successful export-oriented growth ~ Anwar Shaikh

Consider a cognitive scientist concerned with the empirical study of the mind, especially the cognitive unconscious, and ultimately committed to understanding the mind in terms of the brain and its neural structure. To such a scientist of the mind, Anglo-American approaches to the philosophy of mind and language of the sort discussed above seem odd indeed. The brain uses neurons, not languagelike symbols. Neural computation works by real-time spreading activation, which is neither akin to prooflike deductions in a mathematical
logic, nor like disembodied algorithms in classical artificial intelligence, nor like derivations in a transformational grammar. ~ George Lakoff

Bealer argues that the kind of naturalistic view which Quine holds will rob him of the ability to make the normative claims which (many) naturalists wish to make in epistemology. I don't think this is right about Quine, but I'm certain it's not right about my own view. To the extent that I can show that talk of knowledge is firmly rooted within empirical theories where it plays an important explanatory role, I thereby demonstrate its naturalistic credentials. ~ Hilary Kornblith

I remain 'torn' (between a 'hyberbolic' ethical vision of forgiveness, pure forgiveness, and the reality of a society at work in pragmatic processes of reconciliation). But without power, desire, or need to decide. The two poles are irreducible to one another, certainly, but they remain indissociable. In order to inflect politics, or what you just called the 'pragmatic processes', in order to change the law (which, thus, finds itself between the two poles, the 'ideal' and the 'empirical' – and what is more important to me here is, between these two, this universalising mediation, this history of the law, the possibility of this progress of the law), it is necessary to refer to a '"hyperbolic" ethical vision of forgiveness'. Even if I were not sure of the words 'vision' or 'ethics' in this case, let us say that only this inflexible exigence can orient a history of laws, and evolution of the law. It alone can inspire here, now, in the urgency, without waiting, response and responsibilities. ~ Jacques Derrida

I have concluded through careful empirical analysis and much thought that somebody is looking out for me, keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less than I ought. Giving me strength to shoot for more than I think I'm capable of. I believe they know everything that I do and think, and they still love me, and I've concluded, after careful consideration, that this person keeping score is me ~ Adam Savage

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that."("The Last Word" by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997) ~ Thomas Nagel

Scientific research is compounded of ... empirical procedures, general speculative ideas, and mathematical or abstract reasoning. ~ James Bryant Conant

I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The 'dazzling royals' have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. ~ Morrissey

Though no such study would or should receive approval from an ethical review board, Kristiansen, Haslip, and Kelly (1997) pointed out that there are no empirical studies demonstrating that it is possible to instill false memories of abuse.
KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING ABOUT TRAUMA: IMPLICATIONS FOR THERAPY ~ Jennifer J. Freyd

After several decades of empirical study, Jaques concluded that just as humans differ in intelligence, we differ in our ability to handle time-dependent complexity. We all have a natural time horizon we are comfortable with: what Jaques called "time span of discretion," or the length of the longest task an individual can successfully undertake. ~ John Brockman

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist. ~ Terry Pratchett

Social conservatives do have a pretty decent predictive track record, including in many cases where their fears were dismissed as wild and apocalyptic, their projections as sky-is-falling nonsense, their theories of how society and human nature works as evidence-free fantasies. . . . If you look at the post-1960s trend data - whether it's on family structure and social capital, fertility and marriage rates, patterns of sexual behavior and their links to flourishing relationships, or just trends in marital contentment and personal happiness more generally - the basic social conservative analysis has turned out to have more predictive power than my rigorously empirical liberal friends are inclined to admit. . . .
In the late 1960s and early '70s, the pro-choice side of the abortion debate frequently predicted that legal abortion would reduce single parenthood and make marriages more stable, while the pro-life side made the allegedly-counterintuitive claim that it would have roughly the opposite effect; overall, it's fair to say that post-Roe trends were considerably kinder to Roe's critics than to the "every child a wanted child" conceit. Conservatives (and not only conservatives) also made various "dystopian" predictions about eugenics and the commodification of human life as reproductive science advanced in the '70s, while many liberals argued that these fears were overblown; today, from "selective reduction" to the culling of Down's Syndrome fetuses to worldwide tr ~ Ross Douthat

As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances. ~ Alfred Korzybski

Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group. ~ Steven Pinker

Adam and Eve had first-hand empirical evidence of God's existence. He walked in the Garden with them. Their problem was that God told them they could not eat of a certain tree. – p. 113 ~ Ray A.

So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy. ~ Peter L. Berger

It seems strange to make a priori arguments about the relative performance of governments and the markets in health care when there is so much empirical evidence. ~ John Quiggin

The individual is in a dilemma: either he decides to safeguard his freedom of choice, chooses to use traditional , personal, moral, or empirical means, thereby entering into competition with a power against which there is no efficacious defense and before which he must suffer defeat; or he decides to accept technical necessity, in which case he will himself by the victor, but only by submitting irreparably to technical slavery. In effect he has no freedom of choice. ~ Jacques Ellul

Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances. ~ George C. Williams

On 11 September 2001 the Twin Towers were hit. Twelve years earlier, on 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. That date heralded the "happy 90's," the Francis Fukuyama dream of the "end of history" –the belief that liberal democracy had, in principle, won; that the search was over; that the advent of a global, liberal world community lurked just around the corner; that the obstacles to this ultra-Hollywood happy ending were merely empirical and contingent (local pockets of resistance were the leaders did not yet grasp that their time was up). In contrast, 9/11 is the main symbol of the Clintonite happy 90's. This is the era in which new walls emerge everywhere, between Israel and the West Bank, around the European union, on the U.S.-Mexico border. The rise of the populist New Right is just the most prominent example of the urge to raise new walls. ~ Slavoj Zizek

Discerning the merits of competing claims is where the empirical basis of science should play a role. I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false. What fails the test of empirical reality, as determined by observation and experiment, gets thrown out like yesterday's newspaper. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

What is surprising is that almost all the trends that developed within the sciences, Aristotelianism and an extreme Platonism included, produced results, not only in special domains, but everywhere; there exist highly theoretical branches of biology and highly empirical parts of astrophysics. The world is a complex an many-sided thing. ~ Paul Feyerabend

[A]t the beginning of November 2001, there was a series of meetings between White House advisers and senior Hollywood executives with the aim of co-ordinating the war effort and establishing how Hollywood could help in the "war against terrorism" by getting the right ideological message across not only to Americans, but also to the Hollywood public around the globe the ultimate empirical proof that Hollywood does in fact function as an "ideological state apparatus. ~ Slavoj Zizek

In the first case it emerges that the evidence that might refute a theory can often be unearthed only with the help of an incompatible alternative: the advice (which goes back to Newton and which is still popular today) to use alternatives only when refutations have already discredited the orthodox theory puts the cart before the horse. Also, some of the most important formal properties of a theory are found by contrast, and not by analysis. A scientist who wishes to maximize the empirical content of the views he holds and who wants to understand them as clearly as he possibly can must therefore introduce other views; that is, he must adopt a pluralistic methodology. He must compare ideas with other ideas rather than with 'experience' and he must try to improve rather than discard the views that have failed in the competition. Proceeding in this way he will retain the theories of man and cosmos that are found in Genesis, or in the Pimander, he will elaborate them and use them to measure the success of evolution and other 'modern' views. He may then discover that the theory of evolution is not as good as is generally assumed and that it must be supplemented, or entirely replaced, by an improved version of Genesis. Knowledge so conceived is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is not a gradual approach to truth. It is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives, each single theory, each fairy-tale, each myth ~ Paul Karl Feyerabend

The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. This is particularly true of theories which are based on statistics. The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, once could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity. ~ C. G. Jung

In endless space countless luminous spheres, round each of which some dozen smaller illuminated ones revolve, hot at the core and covered over with a hard cold crust; on this crust a mouldy film has produced living and knowing beings: this is empirical truth, the real, the world. Yet for a being who thinks, it is a precarious position to stand on one of those numberless spheres freely floating in boundless space, without knowing whence or whither, and to be only one of innumerable similar beings that throng, press, and toil, restlessly and rapidly arising and passing away in beginningless and endless time. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen. No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master. Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow; to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it, leaving its cold corpse to be embraced. ~ D.T. Suzuki

It is that of increasing knowledge of empirical fact, intimately combined with changing interpretations of this body of fact - hence changing general statements about it - and, not least, a changing a structure of the theoretical system. ~ Talcott Parsons

Modern physics, having advanced into another world beyond conceivability, cannot dispense with the concept of a space-time continuum. Insofar as psychology penetrates into the unconscious, it probably has no alternative but to acknowledge the "indistinctness" or the impossibility of distinguishing between time and space, as well as their psychic relativity. The world of classical physics has not ceased to exist, and by the same token, the world of consciousness has not lost its validity against the unconscious… "Causality" is a psychologem (and originally a magic virtus) that formulates the connection between events and illustrates them as cause and effect. Another (incommensurable) approach that does the same thing in a different way is synchronicity. Both are identical in the higher sense of the term "connection" or "attachment." But on the empirical and practical level (i.e., in the real world), they are incommensurable and antithetical, like space and time.

[…]

I would now like to propose that instead of "causality" we have "(relatively) constant connection through effect," and instead of synchronicity we have (relatively) constant connection through contingency, equivalence, or "meaning. ~ C.G. Jung

Some philosophers hold that philosophy is what you do to a problem until it's clear enough to solve it by doing science. Others hold that if a philosophical problem succumbs to empirical methods, that shows it wasn't really philosophical to begin with. ~ Jerry A. Fodor

The physical method becomes a philosophy when it asserts there is no higher knowledge than the empirical knowledge of scientific phenomena. The mathematical method becomes a philosophy when it asserts that some higher knowledge is needed to explain scientific facts, and that higher knowledge is mathematics. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

I'm English enough to feel something of a gut-reaction to modernism, to continental philosophising and anything that smacks of a refusal to pay attention to the forensics: the empirical facts on the ground. ~ Will Self

The Scientific Revolution proposed a very different formula for knowledge: Knowledge = Empirical Data x Mathematics. If we want to know the answer to some question, we need to gather relevant empirical data, and then use mathematical tools to analyse the data. For ~ Yuval Noah Harari

With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually, we reach the dim boundary - the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. Not until the empirical resources are exhausted, need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation. ~ Edwin Powell Hubble

The specific and unique presupposition for experimentation is, as remarkable as it may sound, that science become rational-mathematical, i.e., in the highest sense, not experimental. Initial positing of nature as such. Because modern "science" (physics) is mathematical (not empirical), it is necessarily experimental in ~ Martin Heidegger

I class the principle of moral feeling under that of happiness, because every empirical interest promises to contribute to our well-being by the agreeableness that a thing affords, whether profit be regarded. ~ Immanuel Kant

The simple, brief experience of imagining oneself as another transformed both self-perception and, through this transformation, behavior. The maxim "fake it till you make it" gains empirical support. ~ Cordelia Fine

Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

However, one can also cognize the existence of the thing prior to the perception of it, and therefore cognize it comparatively a priori, if only it is connected with some perceptions in accordance with the principles of their empirical connection (the analogies). For in that case the existence of the thing is still connected with our perceptions in a possible experience, and with the guidance of the analogies we can get from our actual perceptions to the thing in the series of possible perceptions. Thus we cognize the existence of a magnetic matter penetrating all bodies from the perception of attracted iron filings, although an immediate perception of this matter is impossible for us given the construction of our organs. For in accordance with the laws of sensibility and the context of our perceptions we could also happen upon the immediate empirical intuition of it in an experience of if our senses, the crudeness of which does not affect the form of possible experience in general, were finer. Thus wherever perception and whatever is appended to it in accordance with empirical laws reaches, there too reaches our cognition of the existence of things. If we do not being with experience, or proceed in accordance with laws of the empirical connection of appearances, then we are only making a vain display of wanting to discover or research the existence of any thing. ~ Immanuel Kant

History is not an objective empirical datum, it is a myth. ~ Nikolai A. Berdyaev

Mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence ... the science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe which are concealed by appearances. ~ Hannah Arendt

I don't believe in empirical science. I only believe in a priori truth. ~ Kurt Godel

We must remember that science is a way of using empirical evidence to better understand our world. We are all scientists, just many of us are not very good ones. However, we are all capable of exercising our intellects in a purposeful, linear pursuit of knowledge. ~ Chris Matakas

I propose that if you want a simple step to a higher form of life, as distant from the animal as you can get, then you may have to denarrate, that is, shut down the television set, minimize time spent reading newspapers, ignore the blogs. Train your reasoning abilities to control your decisions; nudge System 1 (the heuristic or experiential system) out of the important ones. Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical. This insulation from the toxicity of the world will have an additional benefit: it will improve your well-being. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Time is not an empirical concept. For neither co-existence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a priori. ~ Immanuel Kant

Materialism, being a fairly coarse superstition, tends to render its adherents susceptible to a great many utterly fantastic notions. All that is needed to make even the most outlandish theory seem plausible to the truly doctrinaire materialist is that it come wrapped in the appurtenances of empirical science. ~ David Bentley Hart

In other words, the propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character - that is, they do not describe the behaviour of physical, or even mental, objects; they express definitions, or the formal consequences of definitions. Accordingly we may say that philosophy is a department of logic. For we will see that the characteristic mark of a purely logical enquiry, is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions and not with questions of empirical fact. ~ A.J. Ayer

As I discuss in Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?, we may, in the lifeboat or burning-house situation, decide to favor the human over the nonhuman not because death is a lesser harm to the nonhuman, but because we do not know what death means to the nonhuman and we have a better idea what it means to the human. We might, therefore, rely on this - a matter of epistemological limitation on our part and not any empirical claim that death is a lesser harm to humans - as the tie-breaker. We might also flip a coin. We might also decide to choose the nonhuman for some other reason, such as that the human in question is very old and the nonhuman in question is very young. In no case, however, would I think it appropriate to invoke any notion that humans are "higher" animals. ~ Gary L. Francione

The nay-sayers insist loudly that they're "climate sceptics", but this is a calculated misnomer – scientific scepticism is the method of investigating whether a particular hypothesis is supported by the evidence. Climate sceptics, by contrast, persist in ignoring empirical evidence that renders their position untenable. This isn't scepticism, it's unadulterated denialism, the very antithesis of critical thought. ~ David Robert Grimes

It's not just that there is a cooperative spirit of investigation there, where we all recognise that we are engaged in a common project of inquiry. It's also that the philosophers are well-versed in the relevant empirical data, and the scientists are well-versed in the more abstract issues which are typically the central focus of philosophical work. ~ Hilary Kornblith

Once a person has made some sort of stable, symbolic connection between two things, the connection will influence his subsequent behavior and will generate its own 'proof.' This is why it is idle and foolish to try to 'refute' religious, political, and similar beliefs with empirical arguments about referents that are symbols to the believer but not to the non-believer. ~ Thomas Szasz

Simple statements are to be prized more highly than less simple ones because they tell us more; because their empirical content is greater; and because they are better testable. ~ Karl Popper

Before gathering any data, one must have concepts about the data being gathered. These are conceptual categories, meanings, and relationships that are all pre-empirical. They are purely theoretical. Imagine ~ Steve Patterson

The really important thing is learning how to sceptically question and rely on empirical evidence. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

Spirituality is the empirical discovery of our divine nature by the shedding of who we thought we were - Renovatio Sutra #19 ~ Paul Miller

As soon as science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a theory. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and it is just here that the 'truth' of the theory lies. ~ Albert Einstein

Above all, I am anxious to grant no credence whatsoever to the special mythology of "the Enlightenment." Nothing strikes me as more tiresomely vapid than the notion that there is some sort of inherent opposition - or impermeable partition - between faith and reason, or that the modern period is marked by its unique devotion to the latter. One can believe that faith is mere credulous assent to unfounded premises, while reason consists in a pure obedience to empirical fact, only if one is largely ignorant of both. ~ David Bentley Hart

The empirical usability of the sacred ceremonial words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corporeal presence. ~ Theodor Adorno

I had some of the students in my finance class actually do some empirical work on capital structures, to see if we could find any obvious patterns in the data, but we couldn't see any. ~ Merton Miller

The thing that attracted me about philosophy was that it went straight to essentials. I had never liked fiddling detail; I perceived the general significance of things rather than their singularities, and I preferred understanding to seeing; I had always wanted to know everything; philosophy would allow me to appease this desire, for it aimed at total reality;philosophy went right to the heart of truth and revealed to me, instead of an illusory whirlwind of facts or empirical laws, an order, a reason, a necessity in everything. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Philosophers of religion have sometimes claimed that all gods are projections of the human personality, and so it may be. But if so, we must at least recognize the empirical fact that many human beings, rather than project their own personalities upon gods wholly of their own creation, have chosen to introject - take into themselves - the religious projections of other human personalities. ~ Jack Miles

Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Theory is, of course, critical to the development of specific analyses of women's situation. Explicitly or implicitly, empirical phenomena must be organised in terms of a theoretical construct in order to be grasped conceptually. At the same time, theory is, by its very nature, severely limited. As a structure of concepts, a theoretical framework simply provides guidance for the understanding of actual societies, past and present. However indispensable this theoretical guidance may be, specific strategies, programmes, or tactics for change cannot be deduced directly from theory. Nor can the phenomenon of variation in women's situation over time, and in different societies, be addressed solely by means of theory. These are matters for concrete analysis and historical investigation. ~ Lise Vogel

On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualize as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality. ... In the Buddhist investigation of reality, at least in principle, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be. ~ 14th Dalai Lama in his talk to the Society for Neuroscience in 2005 in Washington. ~ Dalai Lama XIV