Empiricism

Empiricism is the theory which, in opposition to rationalism, regards sense perception as the sole test of knowledge. From it are derived the terms empirical knowledge, which is knowledge gained through experience, and empirical method, or the method of acquiring knowledge through observation and experiment.



Few, if any, philosophers have gone so far as to maintain consistently that sense perception is the sole source of knowledge, though this idea is usually ascribed to the British empiricists Francis Bacon, John Locke, Bishop Berkely and David Hume. But Locke and Berkeley both claimed that man has knowledge of God, which is apparently non-empirical, and all recognized that knowledge is gained by comparing ideas.