Philosophy & ThoughtGreek → English
Empiricism
/ɛmˈpɪrɪsɪzəm/noun
The position that knowledge comes from sensory experience rather than pure reason.
The Greek roots
ἐμπειρία
empeiría
experience, practice
Literally: “working from experience”
Follow a root:ἐμπειρία1 word
The story of the word
The Empirics were a school of Greek physicians who refused to argue about hidden causes and worked only from what they had watched happen at the bedside. Their opponents used the name as an insult, and in English empiric long meant quack. Philosophers took the label over in the seventeenth century for the doctrine that knowledge starts in the senses, inheriting the old doctors' distrust of theory nobody can check.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1650s
Same family
empiricalempiric
In a sentence
Hume pushed empiricism until causation itself started to look like a habit of mind.