Empiricism Versus Rationalism
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Rationalism is a theory that refers to reason as the chief source of a test of knowledge that is the act of believing only what is based on knowledge and not anything supernatural. On the other hand, empiricism is a theory that states that significant knowledge is justifiable through experience.
Bacon is referred to as the father of empiricism because his work argued that scientific knowledge could only be justified through inductive reasoning and keen observation of nature proceedings. Bacon came up with a method of keenly observing nature and a methodical accumulation of data, which included three steps which are: accumulation of explicit empirical observations about the features being studied, classification of these facts into three categories; when the characteristic is present, when it is absent and when it is extant in varying degrees (Today. J, Bauska, 2019). And lastly, the keen examination of the outcomes denoted notions that do not seem to be accountable for the occurrence and categorizing possible causes responsible for the occurrence.
Bacon predicted that through science, human life would improve, and it is evident that his predictions were true because four hundred years after his prediction’s life expectancy doubled from 40 to 80. He also said that the greatest barrier to human progress was the blind following of the world’s parastatal that prevented independent reasoning from acquiring new knowledge about nature. Since then, people began making independent thoughts, and humans have made great progress due to the many scientific inventions there today.
Descartes was the first figure in the theoretical program referred to as rationalism. He did his research in mathematics and physics, which led him to see the need to develop a new methodology of thinking. His work starts with the assumption that human knowledge is restricted by the belief that science is justified by the many objects of experience, meaning he did not support empiricism. His first rule states that all correct judgment rests on reason alone for its justification. The second rule states that the standard for any true knowledge should be the certitude demand for protest in arithmetic and geometry (Branken, 2019). The third rule stipulates what the standard of true knowledge entails.
He stated that only two mental operations are permitted in the clear use of reason: intuition, which refers to the undoubting outset of an unclouded and alert mind. Lastly, the deduction that consists of all necessary implications from other actualities that are known with the safe bet. It is clear that if the reason of man unifies all science and if the proper functioning of the mind is associated with mathematical thought, then the issue of understanding is reduced to a methodological question. True judgment is the end of science, but true judgment is similar to intuition and deduction-based mathematical demonstrations. The method of finding truth in all things therefore is merely to limit oneself to these two practices.
conclusion
Since empiricism is unquestionably superior to rationalism, empiricism appeals to me more than rationalism. The senses’ feedback is not trusted by rationalism and can, therefore, never contribute to understanding the physical world. Besides, empiricism may give rise to the greatest claim to fame of rationalism: the logic of deduction. We can inductively formulate general laws describing them by observing trends in our environments (Vans, 2016). Therefore, empiricism is a more useful epistemology than rationalism since it has both an inductive view of the real universe and the deductive knowledge so often applied to rationalism.
Reference
Today, J. S. & Bauska, F. (2019). Why controls an experiment? From empiricism, via consciousness, toward Implicate Order. EMBO reports 20(10), e49110.
Bracken, H. M. (2019). Mind and language: Essays on Descartes and Chomsky (Vol. 14). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
Vans, A. (2016). Empiricism and rationalism in nineteenth-century histories of philosophy. Journal of the History of Ideas, 77(2), 253-282.