What is empiricism?

Empiricism is a philosophical concept that goes well with
modern attitudes -- attitudes, in particular, towards science.  It is the idea that we
should base knowledge on what we can see, touch, or measure.  In other words, knowledge
should be based on things that are empirically
tangible.

This is as opposed to previous schools of thought
that held that we know things by thinking about them.  This school of thought tried to
understand things in terms of how they sounded theoretically or how well they conformed
to accepted thoughts.  An example of this is how some people thought the planets moved
in perfect circles simply because that is how it should
be.

Empiricism, by contrast, demands that
things be measured and proven.  Empiricists pointed out that observation does not bear
out the idea that planets moved in circles.  So an empiricist would say that we should
not believe that planets move in circles because tangible observations show that they do
not (no matter what theories say they should do).