Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 07 – 23
The terms empirical, empiricism, and their derivatives have acquired multiple meanings throughout the history of philosophy and science. Although these meanings are historically related, they are not identical. Consequently, the mere assertion that a claim is “empirical” does not, by itself, specify either the method by which the evidence was obtained or the strength of the evidence itself. A legitimate methodological question is therefore: What is meant by “empirical” in this particular context?
Francis Bacon was among the first philosophers to place empirical investigation at the center of a systematic methodology for acquiring knowledge of nature. In the Novum Organum, empirical inquiry did not simply mean reliance on experience. It referred to the disciplined observation of nature, the deliberate use of experiment, and the gradual ascent from carefully established particulars to increasingly general axioms. Although Bacon attached relatively little importance to quantitative measurement compared with later science, his conception was already methodological rather than merely experiential.
The classical British empiricists, especially John Locke and David Hume, inherited important elements of Bacon’s intellectual project but redirected attention toward a different question. Instead of asking primarily how nature should be investigated, they asked how human knowledge itself originates. Empiricism consequently became an epistemological doctrine according to which knowledge ultimately derives from experience rather than from innate ideas or pure reason. Their reformulation should therefore be understood as part of an ongoing philosophical dialogue with Bacon’s project rather than as an entirely independent conception.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the rapid development of the natural sciences transformed the ordinary scientific meaning of empirical. The term increasingly came to imply systematic observation, controlled experimentation, precise measurement, reproducibility, quantitative analysis, and statistical evaluation. In many scientific disciplines today, empirical evidence is expected to be collected according to explicit procedures that permit independent verification and replication.
The social sciences, however, developed a considerably broader vocabulary. The adjective empirical continued to denote contact with reality, but not necessarily by means of measurement or experimentation.
Paul Lazarsfeld, for example, associated empirical sociology primarily with systematic surveys, operational definitions, sampling techniques, measurement, and statistical analysis. His conception closely resembles the methodological ideals of the modern natural sciences.
Georges Gurvitch employed the same adjective in an almost opposite manner. Expressions such as dialectical hyper-empiricism and empirico-realist dialectics did not advocate quantitative measurement. Rather, they emphasized the necessity of remaining faithful to the richness, diversity, and complexity of concrete social reality, resisting premature theoretical simplification.
Alfred Schutz employed empirical inquiry to investigate the structures of everyday lived experience, while Harold Garfinkel directed empirical investigation toward the practical methods by which ordinary people continually produce and sustain social order in everyday life. Neither regarded statistical measurement as the defining characteristic of empirical research.
Within twentieth-century philosophy of science, the term underwent further reinterpretations. Rudolf Carnap distinguished empirical statements from logical and mathematical propositions by their dependence upon observation. Karl Popper regarded empirical theories primarily as theories capable of being subjected to observational tests and possible falsification. Thomas Kuhn emphasized that empirical observations are interpreted within scientific paradigms, while Imre Lakatos viewed empirical evidence as bearing upon the long-term development of competing research programmes rather than upon isolated hypotheses. Although each employed the adjective empirical, they attached different methodological significance to it.
These examples illustrate that the same word has been employed to designate remarkably different conceptions of inquiry. In some contexts it refers primarily to sensory experience; in others to observation and experiment; elsewhere to measurement and statistical analysis; elsewhere to qualitative fieldwork, historical investigation, or fidelity to concrete social reality.
The distinction is equally important in everyday discourse. Suppose someone remarks that a relative observed more beggars in the subway than before. The statement is empirical in the ordinary sense that it refers to an observation of the real world rather than to mere speculation. Yet it remains anecdotal, unsystematic, and unmeasured. By contrast, a year-long investigation recording the number of homeless persons across multiple subway stations according to a standardized protocol would constitute empirical evidence of a fundamentally different kind. Both are empirical, but they possess very different evidential weight.
For many laypersons in the early twenty-first century, the word empirical simply means “based on facts,” “based on observation,” or “supported by real-world evidence,” as opposed to being purely theoretical or speculative. This everyday understanding captures part of the historical meaning but leaves unspecified how the observations were obtained, whether they were systematically collected, whether alternative explanations were considered, and whether the conclusions are independently reproducible. The history of the concept therefore reveals not a single stable meaning but an evolving family of related meanings. Philosophers and scientists have continuously reinterpreted the term in response to new problems, new methods, and new conceptions of knowledge. Consequently, when a claim is said to rest upon empirical evidence, one should ask not merely whether it is empirical, but also in what sense it is empirical, by what method the evidence was obtained, and what standards of justification are thereby being invoked.
Hossein Jorjani 