Empiricism Quotes

• Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.

  George Santayana

  Experience, Conclusion, Draws

  George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.40, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• 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

  Elements, Construction, Radical

  William James (1976). “Essays in Radical Empiricism”, p.22, Harvard University Press

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• Relaxed Empiricism -- I only believe something to be true if someone I know quite well tells me if happened.

  Bill Bailey

  Funny, Believe, Humor

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• Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.

  E. O. Wilson

  Heart, Winning, Mind

  "E.O. Wilson Is on Top of the World". Interview with Jill Neimark, www.psychologytoday.com. September 1, 1998.

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• "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

  Self, Independence, Mind

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• There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.

  David Whyte

  Fierce, Lyrical, Aspect

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• Real science exists, then, only from the moment when a phenomenon is accurately defined as to its nature and rigorously determined in relation to its material conditions, that is, when its law is known. Before that, we have only groping and empiricism.

  Claude Bernard

  Real, Science, Law

  Claude Bernard “Experimental Medicine”, Transaction Publishers

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• Rejecting all organs of informationbut my senses, I rid myself of the Pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in speculations hyperphysical and antiphysical so uselessly occupy and disquiet the mind.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mind, Speculation, Indulgence

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• Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Successful, Science, Lasts

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Illustrated "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"”, p.363, Princeton University Press

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• It's so hard to believe in anything anymore, you know what I mean? It's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, 'cause it seems so mythological, and seems so arbitrary; and then 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 if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

  Steve Martin

  Funny, Believe, Humor

  "A Wild and Crazy Guy". Comedy album by Steve Martin, 1978.

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• At issue is not only knowledge of the world but our survival as individuals and as a species. All the basic technologies ever invented by humans to feed and protect themselves depend on a relentless commitment to hard-nosed empiricism: you cannot assume that your arrowheads will pierce the hide of a bison or that your raft will float just because the omens are propitious and you have been given supernatural reassurance that they will. You have to be sure.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Commitment, Technology, Issues

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.148, Macmillan

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• 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

  Eye, Trying, Firsts

  "The Journal of Imaging Science and Technology", (Vol. 37, No. 3, p. 537), 1992.

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• What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun, moon, and stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Stars, Eye

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.286, Delphi Classics

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• Metaphysics must be based on what exists, for it has the task of explicating it.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Tasks, Metaphysics

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• Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to penetrate the spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, as these outward are to penetrate the material universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,--these are some of our astronomers.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Real, Space, Transcendentalism

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.307, Courier Corporation

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• Only he who finds empiricism irksome is driven to method.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Driven, Method

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• I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

  Steve Martin

  Believe, Astrology, Watches

  "Steve Martin: A Wild and Crazy Guy", 1978.

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• In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Stupidity, Religion, Rewards

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• Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Stupidity, Causes, Insult

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• The fact that the most powerful and significant connections in our lives are (at the time) invisible to us seems to me a compelling argument for religious reverence rather than skeptical empiricism as a response to life's meaning.

  David Foster Wallace

  Religious, Powerful, Connections

  "All That" by David Foster Wallace, www.newyorker.com. December 14, 2009.

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• Empiricism in the sciences is a method; naturalism in philosophy is a metaphysics; and the latter neither follows from nor underlies the former.

  David Bentley Hart

  Philosophy, Latter, Method

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• 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

  Lying, Data, Wish

  William James, Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis (1978). “Essays in Philosophy”, p.59, Harvard University Press

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• In philosophical terms, the opposite of rationalism is not irrationalism but empiricism, that is, a willingness to form beliefs on the basis of experience rather than from a priori deduction. Empirical evidence never yields the dogmatic certainty that accompanies logical deduction.

  John Quiggin

  Philosophical, Yield, Opposites

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• It is also naïve empiricism to provide, in support of some argument, series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding statement that confirms your point of view and, on every topic, it is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact opposite.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Views, Opposites, Support

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly ImprobableFragility"”, p.32, Random House

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• 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

  Science, Degrees, Problem

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