Empiricism – More Than Only Observational Evidence
What we can observe is the key to all knowable truth.
When we examine the scientific method, we are really invited to go beyond simply observing results in considering empiricism itself. That is, good rules of reasoning that allow us to actually know certain degrees of truth have more to do with how we reason through what we see in front of us using our five senses and what that means for certain concepts. People usually misunderstand the meaning of the word empiricism and they often only hear it paired with the phrase: empirical evidence.
But what really is empirical evidence?
Empirical evidence is really more evidence that is subject to the other rules of scientific reasoning such as the scientific method itself, rationality, logic, statistics, and other concerns which relate to validity and reliability. Or, in other words, other rules of reasoning that pertain to how accurate our conclusions are about information we might be looking at in the real world. Among those items I just mentioned, I think one of the most important ones to talk about, almost regrettably, would be statistics.
Statistics is the study of how we can know something to be true on the basis of the numerical characteristics of the data that we are looking at. In fact, statistics is probably empiricism’s beautiful cousin who takes all the attention away from empiricism (poor empiricism!). Stats can make or break a scientific theory, prove or disprove a quality of social dynamics, reveal or keep hidden various secrets of the universe. For this article, I do not think it would be worth getting into the details of statistics here, partly because I am no statistician and partly because there is more to empiricism than that. A lot of different things can, of course, affect statistics, the way that statistics are used and cited, and the way that we view our data.
Data itself is actually the key to empiricism and perhaps the best form of it we have would be quantitative data. Quantitative data basically means data collected on the basis of overall numbers when only viewing select variables. If what we are looking at is an actual scientific experiment then that would mean that we have hopefully controlled for outside variables. That is, hopefully, we have seen as accurately as possible what will happen naturally without any major intervention (or what will happen on average). The flipside of the data coin might be that of qualitative data, in which we want to examine things in the form of their inherent characteristics, usually to get a sense of what something even is for further investigation.
Make no mistake: quantitative (not qualitative) data tends to be the final deciding method in understanding whether a phenomenon is fulfilling a certain hypothesis, or educated guess, or not.
The best form of empiricism that brings us the most accurate sort of truth is always the kind that can be deemed painfully obvious. If you are headed to work in the morning and a car slams into you as you are backing out of your driveway or parking spot, then we can at least determine that now “you have been in a car wreck.” However, do we automatically know what exactly the damage is to your car yet? No, because we have not gotten out to investigate and look at what is right before our eyes. I’m sorry I had to mutilate your hypothetical car in your mind’s eye, I promise I’ll have nothing to do with any accidents that occur following your reading this post!
But seriously, it should not be considered trivial that we do not know what the damage is until one actually gets out and takes a real look. To give you a real example and a good analogy of what I’m talking about, you might examine the scientific evidence in relation to food. Gary Taubes talked about it in great detail in his books, Good Calories, Bad Calories as well as Why We Get Fat. When you examine the scientific data, you can actually discover over the course of reading countless different studies that the real culprit for the obesity epidemic is carbohydrates, refined foods, excess sugars, and grains. Most people today probably think that saturated fat is unhealthy too but when you look at the real data, the empirical evidence tells you the truth, as Mark Sisson so beautifully describes.
So when we think about whether something is true or false, empiricism often uses the help of its friends: logic, statistics, rationality to some degree, and the overall scientific process. In statistics, there is a concept known as statistical significance, which is also highly important. Significance examines whether a hypothesis is true or false on the basis of what we know to be probably true or probability theory itself. Probability theory is an interesting thing all on its own.
It is only in recent time that I have personally taken an interest in statistics and mathematics and it took me doing one of the most challenging semesters yet for my undergrad degree to do it. If logic were the foundation of reasoning and mathematics were the connecting methodology for taking the theoretical and applying it to reality, then surely statistics could be a way of examining what mathematics is attempting to let us know within its conceptual constructs. Similarly, I have also begun to understand that psychology has giant foundations in neurobiology. The mechanisms of neural networks and the individual physiological components of the brain are beyond what we could have predicted in their now vast importance. That is not to say that all of psychology is reduced to biology but it is to say that biology plays a massive role – something we can observe through proper instrumentation like an EEG (electroencephalogram).
How about another example? What about lucid dreaming? Lucid dreaming is the state of being aware one is dreaming as they are dreaming. At first, the scientific community had doubts as to whether this was actually possible. After all, we know that in a waking state, the frontal lobes of the brain are the active portions involved in actual waking consciousness. As it turned out, Stephen LaBerge was able to effectively demonstrate that lucid dreaming was a real phenomenon in the 1980′s when he conducted an experiment where he was able to perform a series of eye movements while asleep, which had been decided prior to sleep, which would demonstrate that he was in fact conscious while asleep. Or, in other words: conscious while unconscious in all of its paradoxical splendor!
If we had not been able to observe those eye movements, however, and others were not free to replicate this experiment to produce similar results, we may have had to doubt the very existence of lucid dreaming all together.
Remember this axiom, this rule: we can only know to be true what we can observe with our senses, what we can see with our own eyes. Without our ability to observe any particular thing in question, we cannot know for certain that thing to exist. In following this rule of scientific reasoning, you will live a safer, risk free life more closely aligned with Long Term Survival. By combining empiricism with our other good rules of reasoning, we can examine knowledge of all different kinds in a way we have never succeeding in doing before with unsurpassed accuracy and precision.
