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64.13.14.96
In Reply to: RE: Another dictionary--The American Heritage posted by jpvs on July 06, 2008 at 11:04:11
...it's hard to find a good word for etymology.
So, now that THAT's off my chest, what's the big deal with 'empirical'? Do you really believe that it has the inescapable connotation of quackery?
Since this is a hard-bitten, nothing-but science and technology forum it seem appropriate to use the definition I learned in college about the time that your dictionary was being written: An understanding of relationships based upon observation rather than theory. It's usually interactive, we don't just observe, we poke around and try to find a "handle", something we can turn to cause a change of any sort in that which we are observing and thus learn more about it.
Empiricism brackets the scientific process. Science usually starts by trying to explain what is observed. If that goes well and a deeper understanding is established, it ends by predicting what will be observed and then having that empirically verified. Often at tremendous expense to the taxpayers, have you priced high energy colliders lately?
While understanding the next underlying layer typically allows for more elegant and efficient solutions, often less is adequate and possibly all that's available. So while we were encouraged to not solve problems by trial and error, we also learned to put a good spin upon it by saying that the design had been "empirically optimized". What tickles me is that nowadays the term has changed. Since the favored tool for doing empirical optimization has switched from the technician to the computer, the result has come to be called "computer optimized". It has the cache of cutting edge science and technology that just saying "we tried a bunch of stuff and this worked" never achieved. The next time you consider say a "computer optimized" speaker, just say to yourself a speaker designed by trial and error. However, if the model was good the results should be also and hopefully someone actually listened to one prior to shipping.
So in the end as at the beginning we are left with empiricism. In audio, in medicine, in rocketry, in law, in beauty, in sports, in every human endeavor where we have yet to identify and control all of the variables. Every year, we control more and have better tools, but in the final analysis the winners are empirically decided.
Empiricism isn't quackery, empiricism is life!
Rick
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