"Empiricism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "superhuman" and "supernatural," borrowed from our petty theology, had no meaning in the exalted religious consciousness of Jesus. To him Nature and the development of humanity were not limited kingdoms apart from God—paltry realities subjected to the laws of a hopeless empiricism. There was no supernatural for him, because there was no Nature. Intoxicated with infinite love, he forgot the heavy chain which holds the spirit captive; he cleared at one bound the abyss, impossible to most, which the weakness of the human faculties ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... one can claim to see a similar gradual metamorphosis in the light-of the history of the last one hundred, or even fifty, years, Radicalism, experimentalism, empiricism have been let loose on every institution of the country, and it is only when we take the greatest common measure of the results that we can see that the upshot has been on the whole rather good than bad. When Parnell ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... with the truth of things, and oblige common sense, which generally adheres imperturbably to external phaenomena, to dive into the essence of things. While pure understanding usurps authority in the world of sense, and empiricism attempts to subject this intellect to the conditions of experience, these two rival directions arrive at the highest possible development, and exhaust the whole extent of their sphere. While on the one hand imagination, by its tyranny, ventures to destroy the order of the world, it forces ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... mystery imparted by technical terms. By these means they have given plausibility enough to their theories, to leave many a one in doubt, whether it is really a new triumph of human discovery, or merely a later form of empiricism. Its professors are commonly converts to their own theories, at least in a great degree; for, strange as it may seem, there can mingle with the disposition to deceive others, the power of deceiving one's self; and while they exercise ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... been involved in mystery and empiricism. There had never been any scientific or anatomical explanation of the phenomena, and this mystery I desired to dispel. My first step was to ascertain that for experiments on the nervous system we did not need the somnambulic or hypnotic condition, and that it ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... suggested, were little better than mares' nests, and we may set aside their pretensions to have founded an exact science. What, then, is to come in its place? Are we simply to admit that there is no certainty about economical problems, and to fall back upon mere empiricism? Everything,—shall we say?—is to be regarded as an open question. That is, perhaps, a common impression in the popular mind. Yet, on the other hand, we may find some very able thinkers applying mathematical formulae ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... first step in the scientific solution of the problem of life, and the progressive and continuous evolution of the human soul. To use the term "Science" (as applied to the study of psychology) in any other way, is pure empiricism, is wholly unscientific, and has never yet resulted in anything but confusion and in laying a foundation for belief, conjecture, theory, dogma, ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... full of this empiricism; for sounds are harmonized, not by measure, but by skilful conjecture; the music of the flute is always trying to guess the pitch of each vibrating note, and is therefore mixed up with much that is doubtful and has little ...
— Philebus • Plato |
