empiristic

English

Etymology

From empir(ic) +‎ -istic.

Adjective

empiristic (comparative more empiristic, superlative most empiristic)

1. Relating to, or resulting from, experience or experiment; following from empirical methods or data.
   • 1991, Rosita Rindler Schjerve, “Ethnolinguistic and interpretive concepts in explaining language shift”, in Jef Verschueren, editor, Levels of linguistic adaptation, page 226:

     In contradistinction, empiristic approaches show a macrostructural bias, measuring the relation between verbal action and its social stimuli by means of correlations.

   • 2012, Leen Streefland, Fractions in Realistic Mathematics Education, page 22:

     For the sake of completeness, we shall also mention the empiristic approach, which flourished primarily in Great Britain.

   • 2018, K. Mattas, B. K. Papadopoulos, “Fuzzy Empiristic Implication, A New Approach”, in Nicholas J. Daras, Themistocles M. Rassias, editor, Modern Discrete Mathematics and Analysis, page 328:

     Thus a new, empiristic approach is proposed, defining implication relations that are derived from data observation and with no regard to any preexisting contrains.

   • 2018, Percy van Keulen, Willem Th. van Peursen, Corpus Linguistics and Textual History, page 5:

     Much depends on the answer given to the question of how one can find a proper balance between a rule-based ('rationalistic') approach and a data-driven ('empiristic') approach, and between a bottom-up and a top-down analysis.

2. (psychology) Involving or pertaining to learned (as opposed to innate) behavior.
   • 1914, Theodore De Laguna, Introduction to the Science of Ethics, page 199:

     An empiristic theory is a theory that some mental function, which is in question, is not innate in us, but is acquired by each individual – say through the process of association.

   • 1984, David Ballin Klein, The Concept of Consciousness: A Survey, page 25:

     To be empiristic is to regard mind as entirely a product of experience.

   • 1990, Gary Carl Hatfield, The Natural and the Normative, page 275:

     He did in fact seek to connect his empiristic theory of spatial perception wih an empiricist epistemology and an experimental scientific methodology;

   • 2013, K Koffka, Principles Of Gestalt Psychology, page 210:

     The empiristic reader, even if he feels the strength of these arguments, will not readily abandon his theory. For these arguments have failed to show why empiricism is such a popular doctrine; therefore the reader will not yet see explicitly how the new theory explains those particular facts or aspects of facts which make his empiricism so dear to him.

3. (philosophy) Based on empiricism.
   • 1879, Mind - Volume 4, page 448:

     Nor, again, is Dr. Erdmann's view of the critical doctrine as mainly empiristic by any means an adequate representation of its varied philosophic character.

   • 1911, Jay William Hudson, The Treatment of Personality by Locke, Berkeley and Hume:

     And there have been conspicuous attempts in the history of philosophy, to guarantee a person of some sort through a purely empiristic epistemology.

   • 2005, Birger Hjørland, “Empiricism, rationalism and positivism in library and information science”, in Journal of Documentation, volume 61, number 1:

     This kind of time-consuming studies of literatures tends to be ignored in more empiristic and positivist traditions.

Antonyms

• nativistic

Anagrams

• empiricist