Comments about "Empirical evidence" in Wikipedia

This document contains comments about the article Empirical_evidence in Wikipedia
In the last paragraph I explain my own opinion.

Contents

Introduction

The article starts with the following sentence.
Empirical evidence, also known as sense experience, is the knowledge or source of knowledge acquired by means of the senses, particularly by observation and experimentation
Any reference to the human concept sense is not scientific.

1. Meaning

Empirical evidence is information that justifies the truth or falsity of a claim. In the empiricist view, one can claim to have knowledge only when based on empirical evidence.
The first sentence should describe what empirical evidence is.
Empirical evidence is information acquired by observation or experimentation.
There is a hugh difference between observation and experimentation.
Experimentation involves different tests in a laboratory and includes observations.
Observation can be made without tests in a laboratory i.e. solely based on work in the field.
Evidence based on experimentation is much stronger than evidence based on observation only
This data is recorded and analyzed by scientists. This is the primary source of empirical evidence.
In fact this is no hard evidence. You need a proper theory.
Empirical evidence may be synonymous with the outcome of an experiment.
That is not strictly true. To be used as evidence many experiments should be performed which try to scrutinize the theory.
In this context, the term semi-empirical is used for qualifying theoretical methods that use, in part, basic axioms or postulated scientific laws and experimental results.
A postulated law is a theory.
IMO semi-empirical should be called strong-empirical. Evidence based on observations only should be called weak-empirical
In science, empirical evidence is required for a hypothesis to gain acceptance in the scientific community. Normally, this validation is achieved by the scientific method of forming a hypothesis, experimental design, peer review, adversarial review, reproduction of results, conference presentation, and journal publication.
I agree. reproduction of results is very important. This implies experiments. (Plural!)
Statements and arguments depending on empirical evidence are often referred to as a posteriori ("following experience") as distinguished from a priori (preceding it).
This sentence should be changed as:
Statements and arguments depending on empirical evidence are often referred to as a priori (preceding it) as distinguished from a posteriori ("following experience").
The standard positivist view of empirically acquired information has been that observation, experience, and experiment serve as neutral arbiters between competing theories. However, since the 1960s, a persistent critique most associated with Thomas Kuhn, has argued that these methods are influenced by prior beliefs and experiences.
Experience is not a neutral arbiter.
Prior beliefs and experiences can not be used as Empirical Evidence.
Prior experiments are possible to unravel the laws of nature.

2. See also

Following is a list with "Comments in Wikipedia" about related subjects

Reflection 1 - Testability

Testability, the activity to perform experiments to decide if a recipe, hypothesis, medicin or theory is right wrong is very important in science.
When you consider physical sciences, medicin and chemistry most of these tests are performed in a laboratory. Astronomy, Cosmology and Astro physics is an area where it is very difficult to perform experiments. In many cases the only thing we can is to observe similar processes (events) and try by reasoning to unravel the laws that describe these processes (events).
Newton's Law is discovered using that method. What makes this law so strong is that part of the hypothesis on which this law is based can be actualy be tested in a laboratory. The Inflation theory describes an extra burst in expansion direct after the Big Bang. To demonstrate that is much more difficult.

Reflection 2 - Inflation Theory

The Inflation theory comes in many flavours. Empirical evidence available is only based on observations. To decide which flavour to select, is extreme difficult

Feedback

If you want to give a comment you can use the following form Comment form
Created: 15 June 2017

Go Back to Wikipedia Comments in Wikipedia documents
Back to my home page Index