Empiricism Quotes

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Quotes About Empiricism

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Without the withering criticism by nominalism, medieval Christian philosophy and theology would not have relinquished their claim to the role of knowledge in discovering the nature of things in light of higher principles; instead, it caused them to leave the field of battle without any defense before the onslaught of secularism, rationalism, and empiricism, which were, as a result, able to gain a remarkably easy victory. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Empiricism quotes by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Metaphysics must be based on what exists, for it has the task of explicating it. ~ Franz Grillparzer
Empiricism quotes by Franz Grillparzer
He is a mechanic of the brain. He has cut it to piecese and found no soul. Therefore there is none. Like the Russian astronauts who circled the earth and did not see God. It is the empiricism of the mechanic, and a mechanic is only a child with superior motor control. ~ Stephen King
Empiricism quotes by Stephen King
There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from. ~ David Whyte
Empiricism quotes by David Whyte
It is necessary to choose: if you wish to be an empiricist, you must abandon the hope of founding scientific knowledge on a solid and certain basis; if you wish to have a solidly established science, you must place it under the protection of the idea of Necessity and, in addition, recognize this idea as primordial, original, having no beginning and consequently no end - that is to say, you must endow it with the superiorities and qualities that men generally accord to the S ~ Lev Shestov
Empiricism quotes by Lev Shestov
"We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" in a draft of the Declaration of Independence changes it instead into an assertion of rationality. The scientific mind of Franklin drew on the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of David Hume and Gottfried Leibniz. In what became known as "Hume's Fork" the latters' theory distinguished between synthetic truths that describe matters of fact, and analytic truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Empiricism quotes by Benjamin Franklin
The beauty of agile comes in with its incremental nature and use of empiricism to focus on three "I"s - Interaction, Iteration, and Improvement. ~ Pearl Zhu
Empiricism quotes by Pearl Zhu
It's so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary ... but, on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything anymore if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch. ~ Steve Martin
Empiricism quotes by Steve Martin
Since the Enlightenment, in the great tension between rationalism (how we would like things to be so they make sense to us) and empiricism (how things are), we have been blaming the world for not fitting the beds of "rational" models, have tried to change humans to fit technology, fudged our ethics to fit our needs for employment, asked economic life to fit the theories of economists, and asked human life to squeeze into some narrative. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Empiricism quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case. It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond to those implied in its assumptions and inferences. Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts. ~ Ludwig Von Mises
Empiricism quotes by Ludwig Von Mises
My interests drew me in different directions. On the one hand I was powerfully attracted by science, with its truths based on facts; on the other hand I was fascinated by everything to do with comparative religion. [ ... ] In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in religion, that of empiricism. ~ Carl Jung
Empiricism quotes by Carl Jung
In other words, history teaches us to avoid the brand of naive empiricism that consists of learning from casual historical facts. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Empiricism quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
But promoting philosophical skepticism is not quite the mission of this book. If awareness of the Black Swan problem can lead us into withdrawal and extreme skepticism, I take here the exact opposite direction. I am interested in deeds and true empiricism. So, this book was not written by a Sufi mystic, or even by a skeptic in the ancient or medieval sense, or even (we will see) in a philosophical sense, but by a practitioner whose principal aim is not to be a sucker in things that matter, period. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Empiricism quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If proof were the standard of truth, fallacies would constitute the ultimate reality. ~ Raheel Farooq
Empiricism quotes by Raheel Farooq
[Stoner] said you don't kill two women and just stop there. I disagreed. I told Bill he was unduly tied to cop empiricism. I said the San Gabriel Valley was this deus ex machina. The people who flocked there flocked there for unconscious reasons that superseded conscious application of logic and made anything possible. The region defined the crime. The region was the crime ... The region explained it all. The unconscious San Gabriel Valley migration explained every absurd and murderous act that went down there. Our job was to pin point three people within that migration. ~ James Ellroy
Empiricism quotes by James Ellroy
There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically
we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first! ~ Edwin Land
Empiricism quotes by Edwin Land
The founding of a science more or less on the notion of repetition brings in its train yet another delusion of a quantitative kind, the delusion that consists in thinking that the accumulation of a large number of facts can be of use by itself as 'proof' of a theory; nevertheless, even a little reflection will make it evident that facts of the same kind are always indefinite in multitude, so that they can never all be taken into account, quite apart from the consideration that the same facts usually fit several different theories equally well. It will be said that the establishment of a greater number of facts does at least give more 'probability' to a theory; but to say so is to admit that no certitude can be arrived at in that way, and that therefore the conclusions promulgated have nothing 'exact' about them; it is also an admission of the wholly 'empirical' character of modern science, although, by a strange irony, its partisans are pleased to accuse of 'empiricism' the knowledge of the ancients, whereas exactly the opposite is the truth: for this ancient knowledge, of the true nature of which they have no idea whatever, started from principles and not from experimental observations, so that it can truly be said that profane science is built up exactly the opposite way round to traditional science. ~ Rene Guenon
Empiricism quotes by Rene Guenon
When Friedrich Nietzsche mocked Immanuel Kant for having "discovered a moral faculty in man", he inadvertently resolved Kant's dilemma of being unable to identify what exactly constituted his "moral law" for fear of offending against a charge of empiricism from the likes of David Hume. ~ Joseph B.H. McMillan
Empiricism quotes by Joseph B.H. McMillan
We know that modern art tends to realise these conditions: in this sense it becomes a veritable theatre of metamorphoses and permutations. A theatre where nothing is fixed, a labyrinth without a thread (Ariadne has hung herself). The work of art leaves the domain of representation in order to become 'experience', transcendental empiricism or science of the sensible. ~ Anonymous
Empiricism quotes by Anonymous
Like belief, doubt takes a lot of different forms, from ancient Skepticism to modern scientific empiricism, from doubt in many gods to doubt in one God, to doubt that recreates and enlivens faith and doubt that is really disbelief. ~ Jennifer Michael Hecht
Empiricism quotes by Jennifer Michael Hecht
…let us point out precisely the difficulties of empiricism as a theory of knowledge. First, it begins with two fixed, unchangeable ultimates--mind and matter. Second, it asserts that knowledge is the agreement of ideas with each other, in which case we are not dealing with nature or things at all, and consequently, have left out one of our ultimates. Third, it then asserts (for it is essential that knowledge should somehow or other be connected with things) that knowledge consists in the agreement between an idea and a thing; and in this case we can never tell when the agreement takes place; and furthermore, it is impossible for ideas and things to disagree, for, according to the theory, ideas are copies of things. This means that empiricism can not account for the fact of error. Every theory of knowledge must make a place for error, for, as is evident, error seems to be as industrious as truth.
Consequently, if knowledge actually does take place, if there is such an activity, thing, or relation as knowledge, empiricism fails to give an account of it which is free from contradictions. The moral is, as the stories in our school readers say, don't begin with fixed things, for they beguileth one into inconsistencies. ~ Holly Estil Cunningham
Empiricism quotes by Holly Estil Cunningham
For the same reason there is nowhere to begin to trace the sheaf or the graphics of differance. For what is put into question is precisely the quest for a rightful beginning, an absolute point of departure, a principal responsibility. The problematic of writing is opened by putting into question the value of the arkhe. What I will propose here will not be elaborated simply as a philosophical discourse, operating according to principles, postulates, axioms, or definitions, and proceeding along the discursive lines of a linear order of reasons. In the delineation of differance everything is strategic and adventurous. Strategic because no transcendent truth present outside the field of writing can govern theologically the totality of the field. Adventurous because this strategy is a not simple strategy in the sense that strategy orients tactics according to a final goal, a telos or theme of domination, a mastery and ultimate reappropriation of the development of the field. Finally, a strategy without finality, what might be called blind tactics, or empirical wandering if the value of empiricism did not itself acquire its entire meaning in opposition to philosophical responsibility. If there is a certain wandering in the tracing of differance, it no more follows the lines of philosophical-logical discourse than that of its symmetrical and integral inverse, empirical-logical discourse. The concept of play keeps itself beyond this opposition, announcing, on the eve of philosophy an ~ Jacques Derrida
Empiricism quotes by Jacques Derrida
To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced. ~ William James
Empiricism quotes by William James
Empiricism assumes that objects can be understood independendy of observing subjects. Truth is therefore assumed to lie in a world external to the observer whose job is to record and faithfully reflect the attributes of objects. This logical empiricism is a pragmatic version of that scientific method which goes under the name of 'logical positivism', and is founded in a particular and very strict view of language and meaning. ~ David Harvey
Empiricism quotes by David Harvey
Without empathy and love there is no morality, no altruism, no compassion for others. The scientific mindset, like the artistic and spiritual ones, must be passionate and not easily dissuaded from its path. Although, the empirical mindset must be ever more vigilant than the artist because there is much more at stake than just individual freedom, there is the very basis for truthful inquiry. ~ Leviak B. Kelly
Empiricism quotes by Leviak B. Kelly
Entwined with the strand of conservatism in the Democratic party is the strand of empiricism. ~ Dean Acheson
Empiricism quotes by Dean Acheson
The theories of the social sciences do not consist of "laws" in the sense of empirical rules about the behavior of objects definable in physical terms. All that the theory of the social sciences attempts is to provide a technique of reasoning which assists us in connecting individual facts, but which, like logic or mathematics, is not about the facts. It can, therefore, and this is the second point, never be verified or falsified by reference to facts. ~ Friedrich Hayek
Empiricism quotes by Friedrich Hayek
Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Empiricism quotes by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience. ~ Willard Van Orman Quine
Empiricism quotes by Willard Van Orman Quine
I remember the teacher telling us that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, alongside Russia. "The Soviet Union is the largest and most glorious empire that the world has ever seen," the teacher
lectured. "We're all proud comrades. We're all like brothers. We're so lucky to be part of the greatest
nation that has ever existed. We love our country and our country loves us like a mother loves her children. ~ Carlito Sofer, Nik Krasno
Empiricism quotes by Carlito Sofer, Nik Krasno
The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes. ~ William James
Empiricism quotes by William James
Beliefs are personal, but universal truths are above that. For example, the surface temperature of the sun is around 5,505 degrees Celsius – the speed of light is around 300,000 kilometers per second – the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old – modern day chimps are the closest cousins of us humans. These are irrefutable universal truth, regardless of what anyone believes. ~ Abhijit Naskar
Empiricism quotes by Abhijit Naskar
truly my opinion is, that all our opinions are alike vain and uncertain. what we approve today, we condemn tomorrow. we keep a stir about knowledge, and spend our lives in the pursuit of it, when, alas! we know nothing all the while: nor do i think it possible for us to ever know anything in this life. our faculties are too narrow and too few. nature certainly never intended us for speculation. ~ George Berkeley
Empiricism quotes by George Berkeley
He spent a very uncomfortable few moments trying to remember his prepared position for explaining to God that he had nonetheless been right not to believe in Him on the basis of all available evidence, and that his empiricism and advocacy of sceptical enquiry was vindicated because faith-based belief had proven hugely detrimental to humankind's welfare. At the same time, another part of his brain was busy thinking: Please don't let the Catholics be right, please don't let the Catholics be right. ~ Christopher Brookmyre
Empiricism quotes by Christopher Brookmyre
The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism. ~ William James
Empiricism quotes by William James
There's a difference between thinking you can't be wrong and having no regrets. Wrongness is what occurs prior to empiricism, in hindsight a counterpart of revelation, and revelation is nothing to regret. ~ Criss Jami
Empiricism quotes by Criss Jami
The position I now favor is that economics is a pre-science, rather like astronomy before Copernicus, Brahe and Galileo. I still hold out hope of better behavior in the future, but given the travesties of logic and anti-empiricism that have been committed in its name, it would be an insult to the other sciences to give economics even a tentative membership of that field.1 ~ Steve Keen
Empiricism quotes by Steve Keen
So far from a political ideology being the quasi-divine parent of political activity, it turns out to be its earthly stepchild. Instead of an independently premeditated scheme of ends to be pursued, it is a system of ideas abstracted from the manner in which people have been accustomed to go about the business of attending to the arrangements of their societies. The pedigree of every political ideology shows it to be the creature, not of premeditation in advance of political activity, but of meditation upon a manner of politics. In short, political activity comes first and a political ideology follows after; and the understanding of politics we are investigating has the disadvantage of being, in the strict sense, preposterous.
Let us consider the matter first in relation to scientific hypothesis, which I have taken to play a role in scientific activity in some respects similar to that of an ideology in politics. If a scientific hypothesis were a self-generated bright idea which owed nothing to scientific activity, then empiricism governed by hypothesis could be considered to compose a self-contained manner of activity; but this certainly is not its character. The truth is that only a man who is already a scientist can formulate a scientific hypothesis; that is, an hypothesis is not an independent invention capable of guiding scientific inquiry, but a dependent supposition which arises as an abstraction from within already existing scientific activity. Moreover, even when ~ Michael Oakeshott
Empiricism quotes by Michael Oakeshott
I have a reverence for medicine because I hero-worshiped my father [a former doctor], and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don't study, empiricize or think rationally myself - but I admire it in others. ~ Hugh Laurie
Empiricism quotes by Hugh Laurie
Medicine is not a science; it is empiricism founded on a network of blunders. ~ Emmet Densmore
Empiricism quotes by Emmet Densmore
Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them. ~ George Santayana
Empiricism quotes by George Santayana
Those in the grip of the methodological inhibition often refuse to say anything about modern society unless it has been through the fine little mill of The Statistical Ritual. It is usual to say that what they produce is true even if unimportant. I do not agree with this; more and more I wonder how true it is. I wonder how much exactitude, or even pseudo-precision, is here confused with 'truth'; and how much abstracted empiricism is taken as the only 'empirical' manner of work. ~ C. Wright Mills
Empiricism quotes by C. Wright Mills
We" are the empirical decision makers who hold that uncertainty is our discipline, and that understanding how to act under conditions of incomplete information is the highest and most urgent human pursuit. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Empiricism quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Relaxed Empiricism
I only believe something to be true if someone I know quite well tells me if happened. ~ Bill Bailey
Empiricism quotes by Bill Bailey
Making another effort to be paradoxical, Williams decides to identify Orwell as an instance of 'the paradox of the exile'. This, which he also identified with D. H. Lawrence, constituted an actual 'tradition', which, in England:

attracts to itself many of the liberal virtues: empiricism, a certain integrity, frankness. It has also, as the normally contingent virtue of exile, certain qualities of perception: in particular, the ability to distinguish inadequacies in the groups which have been rejected. It gives, also, an appearance of strength, although this is largely illusory. The qualities, though salutary, are largely negative; there is an appearance of hardness (the austere criticism of hypocrisy, complacency, self-deceit), but this is usually brittle, and at times hysterical: the substance of community is lacking, and the tension, in men of high quality, is very great.

This is quite a fine passage, even when Williams is engaged in giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Orwell's working title for Nineteen Eighty-Four was 'The Last Man in Europe,' and there are traces of a kind of solipsistic nobility elsewhere in his work, the attitude of the flinty and solitary loner. May he not be valued, however, as the outstanding English example of the dissident intellectual who preferred above all other allegiances the loyalty to truth? Self-evidently, Williams does not believe this and the clue is in the one word, so seemingly innocuous in itself, ~ Christopher Hitchens
Empiricism quotes by Christopher Hitchens
The educated don't get that way by memorizing facts; they get that way by respecting them. ~ Tom Heehler
Empiricism quotes by Tom Heehler
An empirical philosophy is in any case a kind of intellectual disrobing. We cannot permanently divest ourselves of the intellectual habits we take on and wear when we assimilate the culture of our own time and place. But intelligent furthering of culture demands that we take some of them off, that we inspect them critically to see what they are made of and what wearing them does to us. We cannot achieve recovery of primitive naïveté. But there is attainable a cultivated naïveté of eye, ear and thought. ~ John Dewey
Empiricism quotes by John Dewey
Toynbee offers his own explanation of how and why societies survive and prosper. It is the leadership of "creative minorities" that keeps societies alive and flourishing. But when the "creative" minority becomes a "dominant" minority, imposing its will by force and oppression, then poletariats (internal and external) are created and the society disintegrates. Though fervent and profuse with the data of his "English empiricism," Toynbee still developed his own mystique to replace "destiny." The real progress of a civilization consists in what Toynbee calls "etherialization"-"an overcoming of material obstacles which releases the energy of the society to make responses to challenges which henceforth are internal rather than external, spiritual rather than material. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin
Empiricism quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin
[Asked by an audience member at a public Q&A session] Considering that atheism cannot possibly have any sense of 'absolute morality', would it not then be an irrational leap of faith – which atheists themselves so harshly condemn – for an atheist to decide between right and wrong?
[Dawkins] Absolute morality...the absolute morality that a religious person might profess would include, what, stoning people for adultery? Death for apostasy? [...] These are all things which are religiously-based absolute moralities. I don't think I want an absolute morality; I think I want a morality that is thought out, reasoned, argued, discussed, and based on – you could almost say intelligent design. [...]
If you actually look at the moralities that are accepted among modern people – among 21st century people – we don't believe in slavery anymore; we believe in equality of women; we believe in being gentle; we believe in being kind to animals...these are all things which are entirely recent. They have very little basis in Biblical or Koranic scripture. They are things that have developed over historical time; through a consensus of reasoning, sober discussion, argument, legal theory, political and moral philosophy. These do not come from religion. To the extent that you can find the 'good bits' in religious scriptures, you have to cherry-pick. You search your way through the Bible or the Koran, and you find the occasional verse that is an acceptable profession of morality – and ~ Richard Dawkins
Empiricism quotes by Richard Dawkins
Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations. ~ James Bryant Conant
Empiricism quotes by James Bryant Conant
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