Empiric

“ CHAPTER I THE MEANS OF EMPIRICAL OBSERVATION OF THE VOICE
To all knowledge obtained through the observation of facts and phenomena, the term empirical is properly applied. Empirical knowledge must be the basis of every science. To be available in forming a science, empirical knowledge of a subject must be so carefully gathered that all probability of error is eliminated ”

“ The empirical laws of those phenomena which depend on known causes, and of which a general theory can therefore be constructed, have, whatever may be their value in practice, no other function in science than that of verifying the conclusions of theory. ”

“ The empirical law derives whatever truth it has from the causal laws of which it is a consequence. If we know those laws, we know what are the limits to the derivative law; while, if we have not yet accounted for the empirical law--if it rests only on observation--there is no safety in applying it far beyond the limits of time, place, and circumstance in which the observations were made. ”

“ Every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist, and the laborious collator some unlucky moment frolicks in conjecture. ”

“ In a wider sense the whole of formal logic is precisely the analysis of the laws of thought. Analytical psychology is distinguished from genetic and empirical psychology inasmuch as it proceeds by the method of introspective investigation of mental phenomena instead of by physiological or psycho-physical experiment. For the relation between analysis and synthesis on the one hand, and deduction and induction on the other, see Induction. ”

“ That fact, indeed, is present to no human observer’s experience. And yet, although it thus transcends every man’s observation and verification, it is an ‘accredited’ fact.” But the thesis, as thus amended, is no longer even a relatively pure empiricism. It is a synthesis of an appeal to human experience with an admission of principles that, whatever they are, or however they are grounded, transcend every man's experience. ”

“ In other words, an empirical law is a generalization, of which, not content with finding it true, we are obliged to ask, why is it true? knowing that its truth is not absolute, but dependent on some more general conditions, and that it can only be relied on in so far as there is ground of assurance that those conditions are realized. ”

“ Theory yields the greatest possible assistance in applying the method of means. For if we have a great number of empirical measurements, each representing the joint effect of a number of causes, our object will be to take the mean of all those in which the effect to be measured is present, and compare it with the mean of the remainder in which the effect is absent, or acts in the opposite direction. ”

“ In conformity with the character of my former writings, as well as with the labors in which I have been engaged during my scientific career, in measurements, experiments, and the investigation of facts, I limit myself to the domain of empirical ideas. ”

“ Thus our intuitive knowledge, which is the source of all our other knowledge of truths, is of two sorts: pure empirical knowledge, which tells us of the existence and some of the properties of particular things with which we are acquainted, and pure a priori knowledge, which gives us connections between universals, and enables us to draw inferences from the particular facts given in empirical knowledge. Our derivative knowledge always depends upon some pure a priori knowledge and usually also depends upon some pure empirical knowledge. ”

“ The knowledge that is possible to the empiricist, then, is merely that which is derived from direct experience, and simple summations or generalisations into a single assertion of a number of similar assertions, all of which were individually derived from experience. This is the position scientists as such, and believers in the theory of naturalism, take up as to the possibility of the knowledge of truth to the human mind. ”

“ What we have said so far is that there have been hitherto certain observed causal laws, and that all the empirical evidence we possess is compatible with the view that everything, both mental and physical, so far as our observation has extended, has happened in accordance with causal laws. ”

“ While many empirical conclusions are, roughly speaking, correct; while they are exact enough to be of great help in practical life; while the presages of a weatherwise sailor or hunter may be more accurate, within a certain restricted range, than those of a scientist who relies wholly upon scientific observations and tests; while, indeed, empirical observations and records furnish the raw or crude material of scientific knowledge, yet the empirical method affords no way of discriminating between right and wrong conclusions. ”

“ We have seen in the last chapter that there is a point of generality at which empirical laws become as certain as laws of nature, or, rather, at which there is no longer any distinction between empirical laws and laws of nature. ”

“ Therefore rough empirical generalizations have a definite place in science, in spite of not being exact of universal. They are the data for more exact laws, and the grounds for believing that they are USUALLY true are stronger than the grounds for believing that the more exact laws are ALWAYS true. ”

“ In the first place, if the interpolation is to be more than empirical, we must have not only the experimental results, but the laws which they obey—we must in fact go through the complete process of scientific investigation. ”

“ It may happen, however, that empirical is an epithet applicable only to the form of scientific exposition; whilst intuitive sagacity has arranged what are mere phenomena, according to the essential sequence of the notion. ”

“ All knowledge that something exists must be in part dependent on experience. When anything is known immediately, its existence is known by experience alone; when anything is proved to exist, without being known immediately, both experience and a priori principles must be required in the proof. Knowledge is called empirical when it rests wholly or partly upon experience. ”

“ Unless we have resolved the empirical law into the laws of the causes on which it depends, and ascertained that those causes extend to the case which we have in view, there can be no reliance placed in our inferences. ”

“ An empirical law, then, is an observed uniformity, presumed to be resolvable into simpler laws, but not yet resolved into them. The ascertainment of the empirical laws of phenomena often precedes by a long interval the explanation of those laws by the Deductive Method ”

“ Our definition of an empirical law, including not only those uniformities which are not known to be laws of causation, but also those which are, provided there be reason to presume that they are not ultimate laws ”

“ By empirical knowledge we mean such as is derived directly from the examination of detached facts, and rests entirely on those facts, without corroboration from other branches of knowledge. It is contrasted with generalised and theoretical knowledge, which embraces many series of facts under a few comprehensive principles, so that each series serves to throw light upon each other series of facts. ”

“ The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when {14} left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes. ”

“ I shall subsequently point out that even the establishment of a wide and true law of nature is but the starting-point for the discovery of exceptions and divergences giving a new scope to empirical discovery. ”

“ But there is no doubt that what we may call the empirical outlook has become part of most educated people's habit of mind; and it is this, rather than any definite argument, that has diminished the hold of the classical tradition upon students of philosophy and the instructed public generally. ”

“ The empirical method inevitably magnifies the influences of the past; the experimental method throws into relief the possibilities of the future. The empirical method says, "Wait till there is a sufficient number of cases;" ”

“ Let us make this ability to deal with novel data the technical differentia of reasoning. This will sufficiently mark it out from common associative thinking, and will immediately enable us to say just what peculiarity it contains.
It contains analysis and abstraction. Whereas the merely empirical thinker stares at a fact in its entirety, and remains helpless, or gets 'stuck,' if it suggests no concomitant or similar, the reasoner breaks it up and notices some one of its separate attributes. This attribute he takes to be the essential part of the whole fact before him. ”

“ It needs scarcely be observed, that,—if direct observation and collation of instances have furnished us with any empirical laws of the effect, whether true in all observed cases or only true for the most part,—the most effectual verification of which the theory could be susceptible would be, that it led deductively to those empirical laws; that the uniformities, whether complete or incomplete, which were observed to exist among the phenomena, were accounted for by the laws of the causes—were such as could not but exist if those be really the causes by which the phenomena are produced. ”

“ I am interested in another doctrine in philosophy to which I give the name of radical empiricism, and it seems to me that the establishment of the pragmatist theory of truth is a step of first-rate importance in making radical empiricism prevail. Radical empiricism consists first of a postulate, next of a statement of fact, and finally of a generalized conclusion.
The postulate is that the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience. ”

“ The same defect occurs in the reasoning of an empirical psychologist when he analyses an action into the various aspects which it presents, and then sticks to these aspects in their separation. The object which is subjected to analysis is treated as a sort of onion from which one coat is peeled off after another. ”

“ An empirical proof of this is the fact that when the question is raised whether one thing is true of another distributively, our objections take the form of asserting that it is not true of some particular instance or at some particular time. ”

“ After so-called “rational knowledge” is accounted for, empiricism now has the right and the power to claim the whole field of knowledge. We know nothing except by experience, and experience is the only criterion of the truth or falsity of any real proposition. ”

“ By combining, however, the exact laws of the greater causes, and of such of the minor ones as are sufficiently known, with such empirical laws or such approximate generalizations respecting the miscellaneous variations as can be obtained by specific observation, we can lay down general propositions which will be true in the main, and on which, with allowance for the degree of their probable inaccuracy, we may safely ground our expectations and our conduct. ”

“ What we have said of empirical generalizations from times past to times still to come, holds equally true of similar generalizations from present times to times past; when persons whose acquaintance with moral and social facts is confined to their own age, take the men and the things of that age for the type of men and things in general, and apply without scruple to the interpretation of the events of history, the empirical laws which represent sufficiently for daily guidance the common phenomena of human nature at that time and in that particular state of society. ”

“ But we must be able to combine empirical tests with subjective analysis, before the intellectual process can be completed which authorizes us to determine whether any given production reaches that highest grade of excellence implied in its being "true to nature." ”

“ A conception used by any empirical science is an ideal tool, or a sort of mechanical contrivance. Using it, we work over the data of our common experience until these data Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901) .djvu/224 cation, of description, of experiment, and of prediction, which are as material in their embodiment as the works of an industrial art. While science deals with natural facts in a far more universal way than does any industrial art, its purposes are no less human than are those of its fellow. Both coöperate to the end of man’s mastery over Nature. ”

“ It must be remembered, however, that hypotheses as to such imperceptible objects are only valuable so far as they serve as connecting-links by which we may calculate sensible events from sensible data. Whatever intermediate links empirical science may find it useful to assume, it invariably takes the sensible occurrences of the phenomenal physical order as the starting-point, and again as the goal of its inferences. ”

“ It may be a thing entirely unknown to our previous experience, something which no simple association of concretes could ever have evoked. The great difference, in fact, between that simpler kind of rational thinking which consists in the concrete objects of past experience merely suggesting each other, and reasoning distinctively so called, is this, that [Pg 330] whilst the empirical thinking is only reproductive, reasoning is productive. An empirical, or 'rule-of-thumb,' thinker can deduce nothing from data with whose behavior and associates in the concrete he is unfamiliar. ”

“ We have reason to hope that the empirical processes which are at present employed will be replaced by scientific methods, the trustworthiness of which no one will be able to put in doubt, and the efficacy of which will endure every test. ”

“ Further, logic having for its chief business the methodology of science, the development of knowledge from empirical data, it ought to include a theory of knowledge, but it should not so far depart from its subjective limits as to include within its province the discussion of metaphysical implications or a theory of being. ”