Empiricism is generally taken to be a philosophical attitude based on epistemological preliminaries, which takes experience (internal and external) alone as the foundation of true knowledge and of science. In this sense, empiricism is the opposite of an equally radical a priori system where knowledge is based on first principles from which truth and certainty are derived deductively. This current but somewhat conventional antithesis does not, however, render clearly the meaning and aims of empiricism.

Even when the name of empiricism is reserved for the Enlightenment o…