We explain what empirical knowledge is, its characteristics, types and examples. Furthermore, its relationship with scientific knowledge.
What is empirical knowledge?
Empirical knowledge is the knowledge that is obtained through experience.
In philosophical terms, empirical knowledge is related to the knowledge obtained a posteriori. This means that it is knowledge obtained in relation to experience. For example, the fact that fire burns: it is necessary that someone has been burned by touching the fire to know, a posteriorithat, in fact, fire burns. The knowledge a priorion the other hand, is given independently of experience.
In historical terms, empirical knowledge It has always been associated with practical knowledge of everyday life. There were (and there are) some philosophers who associated empirical knowledge with all possible knowledge. These thinkers were known as “empiricists” and opposed the rationalists, who dismissed experience as a source of knowledge. The best-known empiricist was David Hume, a Scottish philosopher.
Characteristics of empirical knowledge
Empirical knowledge It is characterized by being a knowledge a posteriori. This means that it occurs as a result of an experience or an accumulation of experiences. It is from the repetition of the same experience with the same result that sedimented empirical knowledge is formed, acquired by habit.
Immanuel Kant argued that the difference between empirical and non-empirical knowledge is the same difference between empirical and non-empirical knowledge. a priori and a posteriori. However, not all knowledge a posteriori It is empirical knowledge. For example, knowledge obtained from memory or introspection is knowledge a posteriori which is not empirical.
That knowledge is empirical and comes from experience does not imply that everyone must experience the same thing to obtain the same knowledge. The generalized condition is that empirical knowledge comes from experience, but not necessarily from one's own experience. Thus, knowing that fire burns is common knowledge shared by the members of a community without it being necessary for everyone to have burned to know it.
In general, it is associated with empirical knowledge with all that experience that occurs through the senses. This implies a connection with the sensible and everyday world, which is why empirical knowledge is also confused with common or ordinary knowledge. However, empirical knowledge can also constitute the bases for scientific-type knowledge without modifying, increasing or decreasing its quality or condition of knowledge.
Examples of empirical knowledge
Some examples of empirical knowledge are:
- Know the fire. That fire burns is a statement based on empirical knowledge. To verify and be able to affirm that fire burns, it is necessary that someone has been burned at some point or, in any case, that every time someone approaches the fire, they get burned. However, it is not always necessary to experience fire: it is enough for the knowledge to be transmitted to us from an experience for it to be empirical, even if it is not our own experience.
- learn to walk. Just like riding a bicycle or using a skateboard, walking is empirical knowledge that can only come from experience. In this case, it is true that it cannot be transmitted from someone else's experience: to learn to walk, it is necessary to try.
- Acquire new languages. Learning a new language involves rational and empirical knowledge, which is key to learning the language: constant practice. Without practice and exercise, it is almost impossible to learn a new language, no matter how much theory you know about it.
Differences with scientific knowledge
Although empirical knowledge was key in the philosophical emergence of the concept of science, empirical and scientific knowledge are not necessarily the same even when both have to do with the perception of reality.
Scientific knowledge is based on specific hypotheses, linked or not to the empirical, which aspire to become an explanation of the real world, something that empirical knowledge does not offer. On the other hand, scientific knowledge must be verified by a specific method of demonstrations and trials, while the empirical responds to a naked experience of the world.
For example: it is a verifiable (and empirical) fact that it rains from time to time, we know it empirically. But it is scientific knowledge to know why it rains and how it rains, or what role rain plays in the hydrological cycle. And we cannot know the latter with simple experience, but we require specialized abstract, that is, scientific, knowledge.
Other types of knowledge
Other types of knowledge are:
- religious knowledge. It is linked to the mystical and religious experience, that is, to knowledge that studies the link between human beings and God or the supernatural.
- Scientific knowledge. It is derived from the application of the scientific method to the different hypotheses that arise from the observation of reality. Try to demonstrate through experiments what are the laws that govern the universe.
- intuitive knowledge. It is acquired without reasoning. It occurs quickly and unconsciously, the result of often inexplicable processes.
- Philosophical knowledge. It emerges from human thought, in the abstract, and uses various logical methods or formal reasoning, which do not always arise from reality, but from the imaginary representation of what is real.
Continue with: Natural Sciences
References
- Tancara, C. (1992). Notes on empirical knowledge in social sciences. Social Issues(16), 79-103.
- Suárez, EG (2011). Empirical knowledge and transformative active knowledge: some of their relationships with knowledge management. Cuban Magazine of Information in Health Sciences (ACIMED), 22(2), 110-120.
- Goldman, A. H. (1988). Empirical knowledge.
- BonJour, L. (1980). Externalist theories of empirical knowledge. Midwest studies in philosophy, 553-73.
