"Empiricism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suggested, were little better than mares' nests, and we may set aside their pretensions to have founded an exact science. What, then, is to come in its place? Are we simply to admit that there is no certainty about economical problems, and to fall back upon mere empiricism? Everything,—shall we say?—is to be regarded as an open question. That is, perhaps, a common impression in the popular mind. Yet, on the other hand, we may find some very able thinkers applying mathematical formulae to economics; and that seems to suppose, that within a certain ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... introduced even in most minute quantities into an open wound, the blood is dissolved, so to speak, and the stream of life paralyzed with an almost incredible rapidity. Without test or antidote, terror has led to blind, fanatical empiricism, necessarily attended with no little injury in the search for specifics, and it may be reasonably asserted that no substance can be named so inert and worthless as not to have been recommended, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... impatiently from abstract argument, and left the inquiry into 'social contracts' to philosophers, that is, to silly people in libraries. Politics were properly a matter of business, to be discussed in a business-like spirit. In this sense, 'individualism' is congenial to 'empiricism,' because it starts from facts and particular interests, and resents the intrusion ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... pneumonia, pleuritis, gastritis, inflammatory rheumatism, or acute, and especially epidemic or malignant dysentery, or in a case of pulmonary phthisis, would probably be viewed by the most of physicians as the rashest empiricism, if not the next thing to madness. The idea of producing antagonistic effects with it at will, they would, for the most part, esteem preposterous. Rather, perhaps, it may be said of the majority of medical practitioners ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... controlled or conciliated by an appropriate ceremonial. This was entitled its SUBSTANTIAL FORM. Thus, physic became a sort of dull poetry, and the art of medicine (for physiology could scarcely be said to exist) was a system of magic, blended with traditional empiricism. Thus the forms of thought proceeded to act in their own emptiness, with no attempt to fill or substantiate them by the information of the senses, and all the branches of science formed so many sections of logic and metaphysics. And so it continued, even to the time that the Reformation ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... might easily be shown that the conclusions of this metaphysic, springing from science, have rebounded upon science itself, as it were, by ricochet. They penetrate the whole of our so-called empiricism. Physics and chemistry study only inert matter; biology, when it treats the living being physically and chemically, considers only the inert side of the living: hence the mechanistic explanations, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He said—"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... and "supernatural," borrowed from our petty theology, had no meaning in the exalted religious consciousness of Jesus. To him Nature and the development of humanity were not limited kingdoms apart from God—paltry realities subjected to the laws of a hopeless empiricism. There was no supernatural for him, because there was no Nature. Intoxicated with infinite love, he forgot the heavy chain which holds the spirit captive; he cleared at one bound the abyss, impossible to most, which the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... not know that the labor movement was the living form in which its spirit was embodied, the concrete practical force of which it stood in need. Marx was the most clearly convinced and the most powerful among those who put an end to the empiricism of the labor movement and the utopianism of the socialist thought, and this should always be remembered to his credit. By a crowning application of the Hegelian method, he united the Idea and the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... such sacrifices to appearance, was fain to assume an air of indifference, equal to that maintained by the chief, who was, in truth, a near relative of the afflicted woman. The minutes lingered, and the delay had seemed an hour to the adventurer in empiricism, when the Huron laid aside his pipe and drew his robe across his breast, as if about to lead the way to the lodge of the invalid. Just then, a warrior of powerful frame, darkened the door, and stalking silently among the attentive group, he seated ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... century a great change has taken place in the treatment of disease. Medicine has advanced with rapid strides, from the narrow limits of mere empiricism, to the broader realm of rationalism, until to day it comprehends all the elements of an art and a science. Scientific researches and investigations have added many valuable truths to the general fund of medical learning, but much more has been effected by observation ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... natural or social, is not in demand in Great Britain, and hence the diminution of supply. We have here the secret of literary and scientific decline, so obvious to all who study English books or journals, or read the speeches of English statesmen. Empiricism prevails everywhere, and there is a universal disposition to avoid the study of principles. The "cheap labor" system, which it is the object of the whole British policy to establish, cannot be defended on principle, ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... Empiricism is not peculiar to Denmark; and I know no way of rooting it out, though it be a remnant of exploded witchcraft, till the acquiring a general knowledge of the component parts of the human frame becomes a part ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft |
