Science and Empiricism

Clinical electrocardiography: offspring of science of empiricism.

Fluorides in caries prevention and control: empiricism or science.

The caries-preventive effects of fluoride are beyond any reasonable doubt! Inclusion of fluoride use in caries prevention protocols has resulted in significant reduction in caries prevalence in the majority of the population. Nevertheless, even in low-caries prevalence populations up to 20% of individuals may suffer to an unacceptable degree from caries. In the history of caries research variou...

Fluorides in Caries Prevention and Control: Empiricism or Science

The caries-preventive effects of fluoride are beyond any reasonable doubt! Inclusion of fluoride use in caries prevention protocols has resulted in significant reduction in caries prevalence in the majority of the population. Nevertheless, even in low-caries prevalence populations up to 20% of individuals may suffer to an unacceptable degree from caries. In the history of caries research variou...

Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology

Empiricists are in general rather suspicious with respect to any kind of abstract entities like properties, classes, relations, numbers, propositions, etc. They usually feel much more in sympathy with nominalists than with realists (in the medieval sense). As far as possible they try to avoid any reference to abstract entities and to restrict themselves to what is sometimes called a nominalisti...

Empiricism, Conservativeness and Quasi-Truth

A first step is taken towards articulating a constructive empiricist philosophy of mathematics, thus extending van Fraassen's account to this domain. In order to do so, I adapt Field's nominalisation programme, making it compatible with an empiricist stance. Two changes are introduced: (a) Instead of taking conservativeness as the norm of mathematics, the empiricist countenances the weaker noti...