. Any of a variety of views to the effect that either our concepts or our knowledge are, wholly or partly, based on experience through the senses and introspection. The ‘basing’ may refer to psychological origin or, more usually,...

Empiricism The theory that all knowledge is acquired through experience. Empiricism is the theory proposed by philosophers and psychologists that all knowledge and behavior are acquired through experience, and are not at all attributable to inborn or...

In psychology an approach based on English positivism (Locke, Berkeley, Hume), which views experience as the foundation of all understanding. This contrasts with nativism, which sees innate ideas as the basis for all cognitive development. As a...

The theory that all knowledge of facts is based upon...

In philosophy generally, empiricism is a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas. In the philosophy of science, empiricism is a theory...

In the month when the Rogers Millennium Dome opened at Greenwich, London, it seems appropriate to look back on the last time the British organized a major architectural celebratory event: the Festival of Britain, 1951, which marked peace after the Second World War....

Why pose the question of empiricism's relationship to literature? How has empiricism functioned as a structuring principle within narratives of the emergence of eighteenth-century literary modernity? Certainly, eighteenth-century scholars claim the novel as a privileged scene for the enactment of empiricist presumptions. On...

In the hurly-burly decades after the Civil War, uptown and downtown, on and off the Bowery and all over Five Points, the New York underworld boasted a roster of real-life shady characters—crooked barkeeps, cops on the take, sundry fences, countless thieves and gangs galore—who could...

In the hurly-burly decades after the Civil War, uptown and downtown, on and off the Bowery and all over Five Points, the New York underworld boasted a roster of real-life shady characters—crooked barkeeps, cops on the take, sundry fences, countless thieves and gangs galore—who could...