EMPIRISICM

EMPIRISICM IS THE THEORY that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience. It emphasizes
the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas,
and argues that the only knowledge, humans can have is that posteriori (i.e. based on
experience). Most empiricists also discount the nation innate ideas or innation (the idea that
the mind is born with ideas or knowledge and is not blank state at birth).
The term empiricism has a dual etymology, stemming both from the Greek word for
“experience” and from the more specific classical Greek and roman usage of “empiric” referring
to a physician whose skill derives from practical experience as opposed to instruction in
theory(this was its first usage).

“HISTORY OF EMPIRISICM”
The concept of a “tabula rasa”(or” clean state”) had been developed as early as the
11th Century By the Persian philosopher Avicenna, who further argued that knowledge is
attained through

Empirical familiarity with objects in this world, from which one abstracts universal concepts,
which can then be further developed through a syllogistic method of reasoning.

The 12th century Arabic philosopher Abubacer(or Ibn Tufail: 1108-1158)

demonstrated the theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment in which the mind of a feral
child develops from a clean state to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society on a
desert island, through experience alone.

General Philosophy of Empiricism

-All knowledge is sense of experience

Proponents of Empiricism

John Locke (1632-1706) British Philosopher in the late 17th century argued in his an essay
concerning human understanding (1960) explaining that the mind is a tabula rasa on which
experiences leave their mark and therefore denied anything knowable without reference to
experience.

The Irish Philosopher Bishop George Berkeley concerned that Locke’s view opened a door that
could lead to eventual atheism put forth in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge of 1710 a different very extreme form of Empiricism in which things only exist either
as a result of their being perceived or by virtue of the fact they are an entity doing the
perceiving.

David Hume Sattish Philosopher. He argued that all of human knowledge can be divided into
two categories: Relations of ideas (prepositions involving some observation of the world) and
matters of fact (mathematical and logical). Human Knowledge can only form by means of
EXPERIENCE. The mind at birth have a knowledge and not a blank state and that knowledge
could only develop by means of experience.