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| Empirical evidence | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:55:49.542435+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Empiricism and rationalism === In its strictest sense, empiricism is the view that all knowledge is based on experience or that all epistemic justification arises from empirical evidence. This stands in contrast to the rationalist view, which holds that some knowledge is independent of experience, either because it is innate or because it is justified by reason or rational reflection alone. Expressed through the distinction between knowledge a priori and a posteriori from the previous section, rationalism affirms that there is knowledge a priori, which is denied by empiricism in this strict form. One difficulty for empiricists is to account for the justification of knowledge pertaining to fields like mathematics and logic, for example, that 3 is a prime number or that modus ponens is a valid form of deduction. The difficulty is due to the fact that there seems to be no good candidate of empirical evidence that could justify these beliefs. Such cases have prompted empiricists to allow for certain forms of knowledge a priori, for example, concerning tautologies or relations between our concepts. These concessions preserve the spirit of empiricism insofar as the restriction to experience still applies to knowledge about the external world. In some fields, like metaphysics or ethics, the choice between empiricism and rationalism makes a difference not just for how a given claim is justified but for whether it is justified at all. This is best exemplified in metaphysics, where empiricists tend to take a skeptical position, thereby denying the existence of metaphysical knowledge, while rationalists seek justification for metaphysical claims in metaphysical intuitions.
=== Scientific evidence ===
Scientific evidence is closely related to empirical evidence. Some theorists, like Carlos Santana, have argued that there is a sense in which not all empirical evidence constitutes scientific evidence. One reason for this is that the standards or criteria that scientists apply to evidence exclude certain evidence that is legitimate in other contexts. For example, anecdotal evidence from a friend about how to treat a certain disease constitutes empirical evidence that this treatment works but would not be considered scientific evidence. Others have argued that the traditional empiricist definition of empirical evidence as perceptual evidence is too narrow for much of scientific practice, which uses evidence from various kinds of non-perceptual equipment. Central to scientific evidence is that it was arrived at by following scientific method in the context of some scientific theory. But people rely on various forms of empirical evidence in their everyday lives that have not been obtained this way and therefore do not qualify as scientific evidence. One problem with non-scientific evidence is that it is less reliable, for example, due to cognitive biases like the anchoring effect, in which information obtained earlier is given more weight, although science done poorly is also subject to such biases, as in the example of p-hacking.
=== Observation, experimentation and scientific method === In the philosophy of science, it is sometimes held that there are two sources of empirical evidence: observation and experimentation. The idea behind this distinction is that only experimentation involves manipulation or intervention: phenomena are actively created instead of being passively observed. For example, inserting viral DNA into a bacterium is a form of experimentation while studying planetary orbits through a telescope belongs to mere observation. In these cases, the mutated DNA was actively produced by the biologist while the planetary orbits are independent of the astronomer observing them. Applied to the history of science, it is sometimes held that ancient science is mainly observational while the emphasis on experimentation is only present in modern science and responsible for the Scientific Revolution. This is sometimes phrased through the expression that modern science actively "puts questions to nature". This distinction also underlies the categorization of sciences into experimental sciences, like physics, and observational sciences, like astronomy. While the distinction is relatively intuitive in paradigmatic cases, it has proven difficult to give a general definition of "intervention" applying to all cases, which is why it is sometimes outright rejected. Empirical evidence is required for a hypothesis to gain acceptance in the scientific community. Normally, this validation is achieved by the scientific method of forming a hypothesis, experimental design, peer review, reproduction of results, conference presentation, and journal publication. This requires rigorous communication of hypothesis (usually expressed in mathematics), experimental constraints and controls (expressed in terms of standard experimental apparatus), and a common understanding of measurement. In the scientific context, the term semi-empirical is used for qualifying theoretical methods that use, in part, basic axioms or postulated scientific laws and experimental results. Such methods are opposed to theoretical ab initio methods, which are purely deductive and based on first principles. Typical examples of both ab initio and semi-empirical methods can be found in computational chemistry.
== See also ==
== Footnotes ==
== References == Bird, Alexander (2013). "Thomas Kuhn". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Section 4.2 Perception, Observational Incommensurability, and World-Change. Retrieved 25 January 2012. Craig, Edward (2005). "a posteriori". The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415324953. Feldman, Richard (2001) [1999]. "Evidence". In Audi, Robert (ed.). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 293–294. ISBN 978-0521637220. Kuhn, Thomas S. (1970) [1962]. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226458045. Pickett, Joseph P., ed. (2011). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-547-04101-8.
== External links == The dictionary definition of empirical at Wiktionary The dictionary definition of evidence at Wiktionary Fieser, James; Dowden, Bradley (eds.). "A Priori and A Posteriori". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 2161-0002. OCLC 37741658.