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/ˌɛmpˈɪrɪkəl/ Listen

adjective

Empirical, Empiric adj.

Pertaining to, or founded upon, experiment or experience; depending upon the observation of phenomena; versed in experiments. "In philosophical language, the term empirical means simply what belongs to or is the product of experience or observation." "The village carpenter... lays out his work by empirical rules learnt in his apprenticeship."

Depending upon experience or observation alone, without due regard to science and theory; said especially of medical practice, remedies, etc.; wanting in science and deep insight; as, empiric skill, remedies.

Empirical formula. (Chem.) See under Formula.

Synonyms: See Transcendental.

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Etymology of 'Empirical'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Empirical" Quotes from Famous Books

... used to Cambridge, and to a very small corner of that. He and his friends there believed in free speech. But they spoke freely about generalities. They were scientific and philosophic. They would have shrunk from the empirical freedom that ...

— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... rise up against the contamination of brown sugar, while they are posthumously amorous of vinegar; why the sour mango and the sweet jam by turns court and are accepted by the compilable mutton-hash,—she not yet decidedly declaring for either. We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery. We feed ignorantly, and want to be able to give a reason of the relish that is in us; so that, if Nature should furnish us with a new meat, or be prodigally pleased to restore the phoenix, upon a given flavor, we might ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... interested, finally, in our methods of travel, and then, in logical sequence, with what he could see about him. He watched curiously my loading of the canoe, for I had a three-mile stretch of open water, and the wind was abroad. Deuce's empirical boat wisdom aroused his admiration. He and his son were both at the ...

— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... of the great law of universal gravitation to remove this empirical character from Kepler's laws. Newton's grand discovery bound together the three isolated laws of Kepler into one beautiful doctrine. He showed not only that those laws are true, but he showed why they must be true, and why no other laws could have been true. He proved to demonstration in his ...

— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... to London Philip began his dressing in the surgical wards. He was not so much interested in surgery as in medicine, which, a more empirical science, offered greater scope to the imagination. The work was a little harder than the corresponding work on the medical side. There was a lecture from nine till ten, when he went into the wards; there wounds had to be dressed, stitches taken out, bandages renewed: Philip prided ...

— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

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