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Definition of empirical:

  • (adjective) derived from experiment and observation rather than theory;

Sentence Examples:

It is a fact that there is a great and original difference between one empirical character and another; and it is a difference which, at bottom, rests upon the relation of the individual's will to his intellectual faculty.

Both 'space' and 'time,' as defined for mathematical purposes, are ideal constructions drawn from empirical 'space' (extension) and 'time' (succession) feelings, and purged of the subjective variations of these experiences.

The emphasis, it is true, falls chiefly on the latter half of this program, and posterity, especially, has almost exclusively attended to the empirical side of Locke's theory of knowledge in giving judgment concerning it.

Since empirical inquiry furnishes no certain and universal knowledge, and since the assumption that like bodies will in the same circumstances have like effects is only a conjecture from analogy, natural science in the strict sense does not exist.

It is no less false that space is abstracted from the empirical space relations of external phenomena, their existence outside and beside one another, or in different places, for it is impossible to represent relative situation except in space.

This is very ingenious, and the only objection to it, if it is an objection, is that only a purely empirical adjustment of the friction can be obtained, and that the range of the adjustment cannot be very great.

Nor is empirical science with its predilection for "facts" better off.

This empirical view probably proceeds on the assumption that a thing possesses the most general as well as the most special qualities, and hence we may lay stress on any one of these at any time and ignore the other ones.

He is the infinite and the vast, yet the smallest of the small, at once here as there, there as here; no characterization of him is possible, otherwise than by the denial to him of all empirical attributes, relations and definitions.

I saw soon that every other method would have been merely empirical, a mere piecemeal of imagination and fact.

Such is the method by which, I hope, it may some day be possible to connect together, by empirical and numerically expressed laws, vast series of apparently isolated facts, and to exhibit the mutual dependence which must necessarily exist among them.

What was formerly called rational psychology, in opposition to empirical psychology, is not psychology but metaphysics, and very muddy metaphysics; neither is it rational, but profoundly irrational, or rather contra-rational.

In opposition to the second, it is certain that the empirical self is by no means identical throughout, and that the spiritual life, in which we may be said to attain real personality for the first time, is only 'ours' potentially.

Empirical truth then is conditioned to the logical tautology of the definition that we have chosen.

An empirical statement - grounded in a stochastic model.

It may be felt that the logic is not very compelling for empirical relations of dubious causality.

The actual, or true practical, consists in the uses of the forces of nature, according to the laws of nature; and here we must distinguish between it and the empirical, which uses, or attempts to use, those forces, without a knowledge of the laws.

May we, broadening the basis upon which we are to build, and studying the manners, customs, and moral judgments of all sorts and conditions of men, develop an empirical science of ethics which will be independent of philosophy?

This controversy, however, is carried on in an empirical manner, with no reference to an ascertained criterion; and the question at issue is insignificant when compared with the general question of which it is part.

Only in proportion as men draw certain rude, empirical inferences respecting human nature, are they enabled to understand even the simplest facts of social life: as, for instance, the relation between supply and demand.

Being extremely intelligent, they perceive, however, that empirical arguments can avail nothing for or against a metaphysical theory, and that ultimately all the conclusions of science are based on a logic that precedes experience.

That the same causes always produce the same effects is a proposition which expresses a fundamental fact of our knowledge, but the knowledge of this fact is purely empirical; we can show no reason why it should be a fact.

Just at this time, as it chanced, a dispute was waging in the field of chemistry regarding a matter of empirical fact which must necessarily be settled before such a theory as that of Dalton could even hope for a bearing.

Beliefs which require to be confirmed by future experience, or which actually refer to it, are evidently only presumptions; it is merely the truth of presumptions that empirical logic applies to, and only so long as they remain presumptions.

It is a vision radically empirical and radically romantic; and as William James himself used to say, the visions and not the arguments of a philosopher are the interesting and influential things about him.

We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery.

This genuinely empirical character distinguishes the natural sciences and makes their loss irretrievable.

They reject the allowance for fatigue (that is, the effect of repetition) and design bridge members for the total dead and live load, plus a large allowance for impact varied according to some purely empirical rule.

I am often confronted by the necessity of standing by one of my empirical selves and relinquishing the rest.

Even when we apply the rational principle of correlation it would be useless in our hands if we had not extensive empirical knowledge; when we use an empirical rule of correlation we depend entirely upon observation.

The law of consciousness which I have used to explain the transformation of a nerve current into perception and images is only an empirical law produced by the generalization of particular observations.

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 observations must be so exhaustive as to embrace every possible source of information.

Continuing to use the word empirical in the sense thus far adopted, it may be said that the summary of the impressions conveyed in the sympathetic sensations of tone constitutes empirical knowledge of the voice.

This empirical knowledge of the voice can be possessed only by one who is equipped with a highly cultivated ear.

In other words, the traditional precepts embody the results of the old masters' empirical study of the voice.

This means nothing else than that the old precepts summarize the results of empirical observation of correct singing.

Only when considered as an empirical description is the forward-tone precept of value.

Combining now the results of empirical and scientific investigation of the voice, throat stiffness is seen to be the interfering influence which disturbs the instinctive connection between voice and ear.

This has to do with the use of the empirical precepts in practical instruction.

This application of the empirical precepts followed upon the acceptance of the idea of mechanical voice culture.

This seems to be the most effective manner of utilizing the empirical precepts.

Imitative Voice Culture was purely empirical in the ordinary meaning of this word.

It is not easy for us to put ourselves mentally in the position of a vocalist, thoroughly familiar with the empirical knowledge of the voice, and yet ignorant of the first principles of vocal mechanics.

Other theorists hold that the empirical precept, "Support the tone," refers to this manner of controlled expiration.

This is found in an interpretation of the empirical precept, "Sing with open throat."

The supposedly scientific interpretation of the "open throat" precept shades off into a purely empirical application.

All instruction based on the empirical precepts is thus seen to be extremely unsatisfactory.

We are mainly concerned here with the powers not of the waking or empirical, but of the submerged or unconscious self.

The rise from this to the high degree of generality which marks the speculations of Montesquieu, empirical as they are, was as great as the rise from the mere maxims of worldly wisdom to the widest principles of ethical philosophy.

What was the elevated note of scientific medicine which gradually superseded the empirical method?

Practical principles which pre-suppose an object of desire are empirical, or experimental, and supply no practical laws.

This theory would seem to owe its great vigor to the fact that it promises to unite the universality of the rational object with the vivid presence of the empirical object, though it sacrifices the definite content of both.

It was this epistemological principle upon which Berkeley founded his empirical idealism.

Add to all which, that the writer of a novel should have had some experience in the realities of life, a certain empirical knowledge of the manner in which the passions develop themselves in men and women.

A philosophical proposition must be such as can be neither proved nor disproved by empirical evidence.

To recommend this conclusion, we must consider what it is that is proved by the empirical success of physics.

We were unable to find any a priori category involved: the existence of scientific laws appeared as a purely empirical fact, not necessarily universal, except in a trivial and scientifically useless form.

The results obtained by observation and experiment lead by the path of induction and analogy to the discovery of empirical laws, and these successive phases in the application of human intellect have marked different epochs in the life of nations.

The opposition is vital; and it is plain that the argument for the aristocracy, that is, for a system developed from all manner of historical accidents and not evolved out of any simple logical principles, must be defended upon empirical grounds.

They are not dangerous things, like 'innate ideas,' capable of leading us to a transcendental world, but simply assertions that we are warranted in trusting our sensations and applying a thoroughly inductive and empirical method.

Stephen, however, is well aware that empirical certitude will not supply the place of religion.

When, setting aside its empirical employment, we come then to inquire what it is that furnishes us with the true indications for the use of a remedy, analysis of the question leads us invariably back to its physiological effects.

The coordinated and classified results of empirical observation, in distinction from scientific experiment, have furnished almost all we know about food, the medicine of health, and medicine, the food of sickness.

The last is an empirical philosophy, which derives all religion from instruction, and culminates in Dogmatic Theology.

These traditions persist in the face of favorable geological reports published before discovery; they are natural expressions of the instinctive distrust of any knowledge which is beyond the field of empirical experience.

For taxation purposes, therefore, it is not uncommon to adopt purely arbitrary or empirical methods which eliminate the element of judgment, and which often result in valuations quite different from those used commercially.

Human life and its persons are poor empirical pretensions.

We agree with him in thinking that where a rational correlation (in the highest sense of the term) can be made out, it affords a better basis for deduction than an empirical correlation ascertained only by accumulated observations.

Such has been the course pursued by the modern science of medicine, which from the original absurd remedies and equally absurd empirical operations, has now succeeded in placing the cure of diseases on the more solid basis of experience.

She has pronounced that reason, timely and vigorously applied, is almost a specific, and, following up this bold empirical line of practice, she has actually produced cases of the entire cure of persons who had labored under its operation.

When its probability is calculated by merely counting and comparing the number of cases in which it has occurred with those in which it has not, the law, being arrived at by the Method of Agreement, is only empirical.

While man's attachment to science and demonstrated truth is growing year by year, so, simultaneously, the art of the historian and the art of the novelist, both essentially empirical, become more highly valued and more widely cultivated.

A uniformity is said to be explained when its cause is known, and an inference from an explained uniformity is always more certain than an inference from a uniformity that is merely empirical in the sense of being simply observed.

Until a concomitant variation has been fully explained, it is merely an empirical law, and any inference that it extends at the same rate beyond the limits of observation must be made with due caution.

This is a species of argument distinct from the extension of an empirical law.

This inert theory continually requires the supplement of an especial consultation, and an empirical expedient.

These factors, to express it in another way, arise in the mind as a sequence of the abstraction and generalization of the immediate aspects of the apparent movement, and they have an equal value with that of all other empirical concepts.

The problem relates solely to the correspondence between something within the mind and something outside it; it applies equally to perceiving and thinking, and concerns all judgements alike, empirical as well as a priori.

Since, then, his conclusion is that even empirical judgements are not valid of things in themselves, it shows that the problem cannot be confined to a priori judgements, and therefore constitutes an implicit criticism of his statement of the problem.

The inconsistency of this treatment of the causal rule is explained by the fact that in the former passage he is thinking of the conception of change as empirical, while in the latter he is thinking of the judgement as not empirical.

A pure perception (of space and time) can underlie the empirical perception of objects, because it is nothing but the mere form of the sensibility, which precedes the actual appearance of the objects, in that it in fact first makes them possible.

If in empirical perception we apprehend things only as they appear to us, and if space is the form of them as they appear to us, it will no doubt be true that the laws of spatial relation which we discover must apply to things as they appear to us.

On no other subject has our knowledge remained for centuries so unsatisfactory, fragmentary and empirical.

Simple as this may seem and simple as it really is, the laws underlying the best way of teaching how to secure a beautiful tone are the evolution of empirical experiences coming down through the centuries.

If you discover these two facts (and I personally hold them to be facts whose reality you can experience), then the quest for the salvation of man interests you, and is defined for you in genuinely empirical terms.

The description of experience has been forced into conformity with this prior conception; it has been primarily a deduction from it, actual empirical facts being poured into the molds of the deductions.

If, then, the conclusion is reached that knowing is a way of employing empirical occurrences with respect to increasing power to direct the consequences which flow from things, the application of the conclusion must be made to philosophy itself.

A transcendental unity whose method is indefinable has no advantage over empirical association.

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.

Now it is the very nature of a derivative law which has not yet been resolved into its elements, in other words, an empirical law, that we do not know whether it results from the different effects of one cause, or from effects of different causes.

When, therefore, an empirical law is extended beyond the local limits within which it has been found true by observation, the cases to which it is thus extended must be such as are presumably within the influence of the same individual agents.

We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery.

We willingly admit, with the empirical school, that the senses have not been given us in vain; that this admirable organization which elevates us above all other animate beings, is a rich and varied instrument, which it would be folly to neglect.

This idea is general enough to include all sorts and phases of problems, practical and speculative, simple and difficult, natural and artificial, final and preliminary, empirical and scientific, and those of skill and information.

If the knowledge be merely accumulated experience the art is empirical; but if it is experience reasoned upon and brought under general principles it assumes a higher character and becomes a scientific art.

To answer this question, we must consider what it is that is proved by the empirical success of physics.

Some have argued that the objects of mathematics were obviously not subjective, and therefore must be physical and empirical; others have argued that they were obviously not physical, and therefore must be subjective and mental.

This classification cannot be made by purely empirical methods of immediate sensuous perceptions.

The distinction between the Marxian theoretical and the commercial empirical conception is, however, not so simple: it arises from the different conceptions of the influence of capital and labor in the economic process.

If we revert to the advantages of scientific over empirical thinking, we find that we now have the clue to them.