Definition of Empiricism

Empiricism refers to using empirical techniques in place of a more comprehensive theoretical framework in scientific inquiry. It is a way of thinking about knowledge that says the only way to know anything is through direct experience through the senses. It is a method that opposes the notion that, for instance, sociology may advance via unproven reasoning and maintains that the gathering of facts can only do advancement. This method has drawn criticism for ignoring the use of theory in sociological research and relies instead on gathering a large number of often unrelated data. The centrality of the focus placed on empirical hypothesis testing emphasizes its significance to the scientific method in social sciences and natural sciences.

Sociological Explanation

The theory of empiricism, initially established by Aristotle and other ancient thinkers, was further advanced by David Hume and John Locke.

It is an epistemological perspective that claims that only what is observed, that is, empirical, may be utilized to generate scientific knowledge. It is a perspective on epistemology that emerged during the Enlightenment, asserted that human understanding of the universe came through observation and the creation of rules that governed those observational data.

Auguste Comte and Durkheim applied empiricism to the social sciences, claiming that society can be studied like nature and that the rules of social existence can be shown using natural science techniques like observation, categorization, evaluation, experimentation, and statistics.

It significantly impacted the scientific method throughout the twentieth century and served as the foundation for logical positivism. In sociology, empiricism is a research attitude that stresses facts and observations above conceptual thinking and theoretical inquiry.

Only verifiable claims were considered meaningful under logical empiricism, where the significance of a claim is viewed as comparable to its verification technique. To defend science and refute the claims of metaphysics, religion, and pseudo sciences, empiricists, have increased the criterion of empirical testability. Empiricism can be classified into three categories: classical, radical, and moderate.

Example

All actions are learned by conditioning, and conditioning takes place through contact with the external environment, according to the behaviorist theory of learning. This behaviorism is an illustration of empiricism.