Empirical quotes:

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Empirical explorations ultimately change our understanding of which questions are important and fruitful and which are not. -- Lawrence M. Krauss
Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject. -- Gaston Bachelard
Empirical sciences prosecuted purely for their own sake, and without philosophic tendency are like a face without eyes. -- Arthur Schopenhauer
Empirical interest will be in the facts so far as they are relevant to the solution of these problems. -- Talcott Parsons
Empirical laws [...] have only slight or even no value beyond the limits within which they have been observed to be true. -- Vilfredo Pareto
Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of themanly contemplation of the whole. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Empirical research has shown that quality tends to be the consequence of quantity when it comes to creativity... Those who produce more masterworks also produce more rubbish. -- Dean Keith Simonton
Properly measured, the average actively managed dollar must underperform the average passively managed dollar, net of costs. Empirical analyses that appear to refute this principle are guilty of improper measurement. -- William Forsyth Sharpe
By this means we presume we have established for ever, a true and legitimate marriage between the Empirical and Rational faculty; whose fastidious and unfortunate divorce and separation hath troubled and disordered the whole race and generation of mankind. -- Francis Bacon
In philosophical terms, the opposite of rationalism is not irrationalism but empiricism, that is, a willingness to form beliefs on the basis of experience rather than from a priori deduction. Empirical evidence never yields the dogmatic certainty that accompanies logical deduction. -- John Quiggin
Don't be more serious than God. God invented dog farts. God designed your body's plumbing system. God designed an ostrich. If He didn't do it, He permitted a drunken angel to do it. Empirical facts can add significantly to the meaning of "being godlike". -- Peter Kreeft
Empirical debunking cannot reach the deepest fear of the reactionary mind, which is that the state - that devouring leviathan - will soon swallow up all traces of human volition and dignity. The conclusion is based on conservative moral convictions that reason can't shake. -- Rick Perlstein
When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical. -- Jon Carroll
Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific. -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence. -- Ann Landers
Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing. -- Michael Shermer
We would be in a nasty position indeed if empirical science were the only kind of science possible. -- Edmund Husserl
Equity feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology. -- Steven Pinker
The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms. -- Albert Einstein
That is, a system starts with a group of interrelated propositions which involve reference to empirical observations within the logical framework of the propositions in question. -- Talcott Parsons
People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections. -- Steven Pinker
Now obviously the propositions of the system have reference to matters of empirical fact; if they did not, they could have no claim to be called scientific. -- Talcott Parsons
So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy. -- Peter L. Berger
Our empirical criterion for a series of theories is that it should produce new facts. The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one. -- Imre Lakatos
In so far as such a theory is empirically correct it will also tell us what empirical facts it should be possible to observe in a given set of circumstances. -- Talcott Parsons
Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory. -- Gottfried Leibniz
There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist. -- Terry Pratchett
Visit a typical science classroom and you will discover far more than empirical facts being taught. The dominant worldview among scientific intellectuals is evolutionary naturalism, which holds that humans are essentially biochemical machines. -- Nancy Pearcey
I'm English enough to feel something of a gut-reaction to modernism, to continental philosophising and anything that smacks of a refusal to pay attention to the forensics: the empirical facts on the ground. -- Will Self
I had some of the students in my finance class actually do some empirical work on capital structures, to see if we could find any obvious patterns in the data, but we couldn't see any. -- Merton Miller
I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way. -- Robert Nozick
My politics were pretty anarchistic until 1969 when the Montreal police went on strike. Within hours, mayhem and rioting broke out and the Mounties had to be called in to restore order. It instilled in me that one's convictions can be subjected to empirical test. -- Steven Pinker
It should simply be an empirical matter whether the climate is changing or not and whether we're responsible. But the various sides of the debate have now become so tribal that it's no longer a matter of changing our views as more information comes in. -- Ian Mcewan
I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The 'dazzling royals' have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. -- Steven Patrick Morrissey
While I have no empirical evidence to back this up, I bet that the number of homosexual people per thousand has not fluctuated all that much over the centuries. I do not believe the dented wisdom my father used to extol, that homosexuality was a sure sign of a civilization in decline. -- Henry Rollins
Science is empirical, all about physical senses that tell us about the world. But physical senses are not the only senses we have. Nobody has ever seen a thought. Nobody has ever seen a feeling. And yet thoughts and feelings are where we live our lives most immediately, and science cannot connect with that. -- Huston Smith
Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically. -- Frank Ocean
Perl programming is an *empirical* science! -- Larry Wall
The theory must not contradict empirical facts, -- Albert Einstein
One can become as intellectually arrogant about spirituality as about empirical science. -- Shirley MacLaine
It must be possible for an empirical system to be refuted by experience. -- Karl Popper
I don't believe in empirical science. I only believe in a priori truth. -- Kurt GÃ¶del
Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues. -- Allen W. Wood
Ultimate questions will always lie beyond the scope of empirical science as it is. -- Paul Davies
There is empirical evidence that leading brands that keep investing during recessions gain share. -- Ken Kaess
The really important thing is learning how to sceptically question and rely on empirical evidence. -- Lawrence M. Krauss
There is a radical dualism between the empirical nature of man and its moral nature. -- African Spir
A close inspection discovers an empirical impossibility to be inherent in the idea of evolution. -- Nils Heribert-Nilsson
... scientific research is compounded of ... empirical procedures, general speculative ideas, and mathematical or abstract reasoning. -- James Bryant Conant
A healthy economics has got to have both conceptual, theoretical research and applied, empirical research. -- Edmund Phelps
Science and art have in common intense seeing, the wide-eyed observing that generates empirical information. -- Edward Tufte
I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof. -- Paul Auster
Not until the empirical resources are exhausted, need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation. -- Edwin Powell Hubble
The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free. -- Allen W. Wood
True science is at length disencumbered of the empirical determinations which had accumulated in the course of many centuries. -- Franz Cumont
The empirical usability of the sacred ceremonial words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corporeal presence. -- Theodor Adorno
Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage? -- Steven Pinker
To defy the authority of empirical evidence is to disqualify oneself as someone worthy of critical engagement in a dialogue. -- Dalai Lama
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones. -- Steven Pinker
We need science. We need empirical evidence. We can't just use mathematical reasoning to deduce the nature of the world. -- Rebecca Goldstein
The propositions of mathematics are devoid of all factual content; they convey no information whatever on any empirical subject matter. -- Carl Gustav Hempel
The central idea in The Black Swan is that: rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare. -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
To define knowledge as merely empirical is to limit one's ability to know; it enfeebles one's ability to feel and think. -- Wendell Berry
Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
To say that climate change will be catastrophic hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions that do not emerge from empirical science. -- Richard Lindzen
I'm all for empowerment and education, but the empirical evidence is that it doesn't work. That's why I say make it easy. -- Richard Thaler
Arbitrariness and true liberty are as distinct from each other that the empirical nature is distinct from the higher nature of man. -- African Spir
There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. -- Alexander Cockburn
Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world. All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. -- Albert Einstein
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If a lack of empirical foundations is a defect of the theory of logical probability, it is also a defect of deductive logic. -- David Stove
The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map... -- Alfred Korzybski
The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions. -- Paul de Man
The assumption that individuals act objectively in accordance with purely mathematical dictates to maximize their gain or utility cannot be sustained by empirical observation. -- Richard Arnold Epstein
Special emphasis should be laid on this intimate interrelation of general statements about empirical fact with the logical elements and structure of theoretical systems. -- Talcott Parsons
Yes, I know liberals are more empirical because Jonathan Chait says they are, but my empirical studies of liberal empiricism keep spitting out contradictory findings. -- Jonah Goldberg
In fact, of course, I hold that propositions that contemporary philosophers would properly count as 'empirical' can be necessary and be known to be such. -- Saul Kripke
Mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence . . . the science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe which are concealed by appearances. -- Hannah Arendt
It seems strange to make a priori arguments about the relative performance of governments and the markets in health care when there is so much empirical evidence. -- John Quiggin
Economic science concerns itself primarily with theoretical and empirical generalizations about the behavior of individuals, institutions, markets, and national economies. Most academic research falls in this category. -- Ben Bernanke
In a world as empirical as ours, a youngster who does not know what he is good at will not be sure what he is good for. -- Edgar Friedenberg
I believe in the empirical wisdom of science, just to start with, so I hope that there might be some treatment out there that might be helpful. -- Linda Ronstadt
It is necessary, first of all, to find a correct logical starting point, one which can lead us to a natural and sound interpretation of the empirical facts. -- Ernst Cassirer
Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed. -- John Fiske
There will be well-testable theories, hardly testable theories, and non-testable theories. Those which are non-testable are of no interest to empirical scientists. They may be described as metaphysical. -- Karl Popper
Time is not an empirical concept. For neither co-existence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a priori. -- Immanuel Kant
Simple statements are to be prized more highly than less simple ones because they tell us more; because their empirical content is greater; and because they are better testable. -- Karl Popper
In the end, a theory is accepted not because it is confirmed by conventional empirical tests, but because researchers persuade one another that the theory is correct and relevant. -- Fischer Black
The ocean is the last frontier of human empirical knowledge; even the contours on that eighth-grader's globe are the product of a mix of scientific measurement, inference and conjecture. -- Alan Huffman
Given the ambiguity of religious texts and teachings, the mixed historical record, and the empirical evidence, it would be foolhardy to assert that religious faith necessarily upholds democratic values. -- Kenneth D. Wald
Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension, and even anger. -- David Deutsch
Notice that tearing oneself out of the insensible state is the opposite of remaining in it; the man who is beneficent from duty nevertheless acts with feelings, if not with empirical inclinations. -- Allen W. Wood
No one is an outside observer of nature,We're defined by our environment and our interaction with that environment -- by our ecology. And that ecology is necessarily relative, historical and empirical. -- Beau Lotto
The disparagement of empirical evidence in favor of a metaphysical world of illusion has its origin in the conflicy between the emancipated individual of bourgeois society and his fate within that society. -- Max Horkheimer
A geometrical theory in physical interpretation can never be validated with mathematical certainty ... ; like any other theory of empirical science, it can acquire only a more or less high degree of confirmation. -- Carl Gustav Hempel
But just as astronomy succeeded astrology, following Kepler's discovery of planetary regularities, the discoveries of these many principles in empirical explorations of intellectual processes in machines should lead to a science, eventually. -- Marvin Minsky
In the great debates of early-nineteenth century geology, catastrophists followed the stereotypical method of objective science-empirical literalism. They believed what they saw, interpolated nothing, and read the record of the rocks directly. -- Stephen Jay Gould
I'm wary of artistic directors who say, 'Here is my vision', because it's empirical. Basically it's about who you work with and what plays you put on; the vision comes out of that. -- Richard Eyre
Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group. -- Steven Pinker
The child who has no need to feign empirical knowledge about life can wonder and fantasise with great ease. The world is his oyster, or any other thing he wants it to be. -- Michael Leunig
I have a standing offer of $250,000 to anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution. My $250,000 offer demonstrates that the hypothesis of evolution is nothing more than a religious belief. -- Kent Hovind
But it must not be forgotten that ... glass and porcelain were manufactured, stuffs dyed and metals separated from their ores by mere empirical processes of art, and without the guidance of correct scientific principles. -- Justus von Liebig
...His argument, as set out in The Problems of Philosophy, was based on the empirical fact that we are not only aware of things but are also, very frequently, aware of being aware of them. -- A.J. Ayer
[D]id you really expect fairness on the environmental issue? For a swathe of reporters, this is not a matter of empirical reporting; it's a matter of faith. Bush cannot be pro-environment because he's Bush. -- Andrew Sullivan
Utilitarians are usually empiricists who think they can solve every problem by accumulating enough empirical facts. They do not realize that thinking as well as experience is necessary to know anything or get anything right. -- Allen W. Wood

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