Empiricism
Experience as the ground and limit of knowledge.
Cape Sounion, Attica (photo A.Savin, 2013, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Origin
Developed in early modern Britain by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.
Central claims
- All concepts derive ultimately from experience.
- Causation and necessity are harder to justify than they appear.
- Knowledge claims should be measured by evidence.
Criticism
Kant argued experience alone cannot explain the structure it already presupposes, prompting his transcendental turn.
Development
Empiricism grew with experimental science, religious toleration and suspicion of inherited metaphysics. Locke, Berkeley and Hume did not simply praise the senses; they examined how far experience can legitimately carry concepts such as substance, cause and self.
Legacy
Its legacy is methodological modesty: before claiming necessity, essence or innate knowledge, ask what experience actually provides and where imagination has supplied the rest.
In their words
“The mind is at first what we may call white paper, void of all characters.”
“Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.”
“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”