Previous articleNext article FreeGround-Zero EmpiricismLorraine DastonLorraine Daston Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMore10 April 2020I am used waking up in the seventeenth century. As a historian of early modern science, that’s where I spe...

Hong Qian’s doctoral thesis discusses Moritz Schlick’s interpretation of the causality principle. This interpretation is based on Schlick’s understanding of quantum mechanics and on his conviction that quantum mechanics strongly supports an empiricist reading of causation in his sense. The present paper compares the empiricist position held by Schlick and Hong Qian with Bas van Fraassen’s more ...

A popular approach to monothematic delusions in the recent literature has been to argue that monothematic delusions involve broadly rational responses to highly unusual experiences. Campbell (2001) calls this the empiricist approach to monothematic delusions, and argues that it cannot account for the links between meaning and rationality. In place of empiricism, Campbell offers a rationalist ac...

For decades, the British philosopher of science Nicholas Maxwell has been promoting a new approach to science called aim-oriented empiricism. Maxwell’s basic claim is that the regular way of doing science, called standard empiricism, is untenable because it does not account for the basic general assumptions that scientists actually adhere to without acknowledgment. Standard empiricism is unable...

Empiricism can be very roughly characterized as the view that our knowledge about the world is based on sensory experience. Our knowledge about the world is "based" on sensory experience in the sense that we could not know what we know without relying on sense experience. This leaves open the possibility that sense experience is only necessary but not sufficient for the knowledge based upon it ...