EMPIRICISM (from the Greek ἐμπειρίαν, "experience") — It is the valorization of the facts of common experience. Against the abstractions of pure speculation, this recourse to the concrete and to experience often appears in the history of philosophy.
Already the first philosophers of Greece, the pre-Socratics, inclined toward this attitude, beginning with Thales, who resorted to water to explain the origin of things (others to air, fire, etc.). But in reality, these thinkers reacted against the fantasies and myths of the poets and legends of the preceding period, and, if they began from the observation of common facts, it was only to construct upon them a theory that would give the principle or principles of all that happens in the world, that is, a metaphysics that here has a distinctly naturalistic character. The Sophists, on the other hand, after them, reduced experience to value by confining themselves exclusively to the daily life of man and the differences among individuals. A clearer and more legitimate note of empiricism is found in the attitude of Aristotle in his polemic with Plato’s theory of ideas, where he insists on the concreteness of reality, which is the object of our knowledge, engaging not only the intellect but also the senses: what truly exists is not the idea but the individual in the richness of its sensible and conceptual determinations. Yet Aristotle already distinguishes what we call "sound" empiricism from vulgar empiricism: that is, the consideration of facts accompanied by critical reflection from mere observation. He speaks of this in the first two chapters of the *Metaphysics*, where, among other things, he observes that empirics sometimes hit the mark better than those who possess theory without experience (the reference concerns medical practice, in which even today the contrast between empirics and theorists sometimes surfaces). Nevertheless, Aristotle says, science is worth more than mere knowledge. This appeal to experience was enough, in any case, to give rise in post-Aristotelian philosophy to numerous affirmations of a broader empiricism: the Stoics and Epicureans, for example, agree in deriving perception from the impressions made on the soul by external objects. Thus skepticism originated and developed, which in this empiricism noted the lack of a stable and secure criterion of truth, but only to conclude with the necessity of adhering to facts while renouncing every scientific demonstration.
The question returns in modern times; indeed, it is in the modern age that it becomes a fundamental problem for philosophy. For modern philosophy, in agreement with the new physical science inaugurated by Galileo, reacts against the abuse of formal logic and the metaphysical speculations (sometimes even fantastic) of the preceding period, and thus it maximizes the world of human experience (the adjective here is not superfluous; indeed, it gives the most significant, polemical note of the new concept). But it would not be correct to define this philosophy as empiricist: rather, it immediately shows itself to be driven by the effort to move beyond empiricism, to construct a new logic and a new metaphysics that can better account for this world of human experience. Hence the discussions on method, in which the names of Bacon and Descartes are celebrated (the former more inclined toward the experimental side of the new physical science; the latter toward its mathematical and constructive aspect); hence the attempts at a metaphysics founded on the consideration of man, who is soul and body, thinking substance and extended substance (Descartes), which Spinoza and Leibniz will seek to unify by different paths. Against this current, later called "rationalist," there arose in England (where, since the time of scholasticism, precursors can be traced) that which is more properly designated as "empiricist," of which the most prominent representative is G. Locke (1632–1704). He enunciated with complete clarity the presupposition from which modern philosophy moved: the world of human experience, and consequently he fought at once against all those theories that admitted principles, whether theoretical or practical, not derived from that world and in one way or another imposed upon II. Hence his tendency toward sensism, though without falling into it, because he recognized the work of reflection, and beyond external sensation he posited internal sensation, that is, consciousness of the operations of our mind, as another source of ideas. This tendency was then developed and perfected by Condillac (1715–80), who attempted to unify the two sources in the single principle of sensation, which first appears as an internal state of consciousness and then, little by little, draws from itself all the richness of the determinations concerning the real world through reflection upon II.
Meanwhile, Lockean empiricism underwent profound criticism even in England itself. It began with Berkeley (1684–1733), who, starting from the principle that every sensation or perception is a state of our consciousness, denied the necessity of presupposing the existence of a material world ("things") outside us. But the critique reached its extreme with D. Hume (1711–75), who attempted to demonstrate that, since human knowledge is founded on the ever-changing and contingent experience of the senses, we cannot affirm anything about reality: neither about the things outside us nor about ourselves. All that remains is a "flow" of sensations, among which no relation of necessity can be established. Thus modern empiricism blossomed into (epistemological) skepticism, more radical still. But from here, as is well known, Kantian criticism took its departure, which began by conceding that all our knowledge has its origin, in time, in experience, yet precisely because experience alone does not explain it, it must be that within it are implicit principles (a priori), forms of sensibility and understanding that he calls "transcendental," posited by the faculty of knowledge itself in the act of appropriating the data of immediate experience (cf. CRITICISM; KANT).
After Kant, but especially after the idealism that extensively developed the (transcendental) concept of the a priori, empiricism fell into a state of torpor: for many it still today signifies the acceptance of the data of experience without criticism (without "philosophical" criticism, that is; for even physical science exercises a critique upon the data of experience, but only as an objective interpretation of phenomena). But in the second half of the last century, a reaction against absolute idealism led empiricism to reappear in new forms, developing that side of Kantianism according to which the necessity, for the validity of our knowledge, of not going beyond the world of phenomena, that is, of experience, was recognized. Attempts were made, therefore, to demonstrate that Kant’s very a priori forms can be explained as a product of psychic associations, or as properties implicit in every sensation, from which they need only be extracted (without the need to presuppose them), etc. Associationism, phenomenalism, positivism, empiricism, etc., thus sought to take up empiricism prior to Kantian criticism in new forms. One has even spoken of "pure experience" and of an "absolute empiricism," to indicate a consideration of experience that resolves within itself all the principles advanced to explain it by Kantian criticism and by idealism itself. But in truth, the classical period of empiricism remains that before Kant, when its force, however still naive, had the greatest charm of novelty.
Today we can say this:
Insofar as it rejects a theoretical interpretation of experience that would serve as an explanation of it in its reasons and principles, empiricism is equivalent to skepticism and must therefore be judged negatively. However, as an evaluation of experience and its positive function at every moment of intellectual knowledge, empiricism accords with the real condition of human knowing and connects with the most genuine philosophical tradition from Aristotle to modern times.
