Socialism

I'm not arguing against science or experiment, and if you think that's my take then please reread my comments. I am arguing against the vulgar version of empiricism. Vulgar empiricists rejected evolution, for example, as it is something that occurs over an absurd period of time (from a human perspective) and thus is difficult to test. Same as soil erosion and weathering. Empiricism is a method, and as a method it can be used with correct world outlooks and incorrect world outlooks.

Without a proper world outlook, empiricism is ineffective. For example, early experimentation often relied on gods as an explanation for phenomena. They were still experimental, and still observational, but without a correct world outlook they resulted in incorrect conclusions.

I'm not treating political science as religion, I'm treating it scientifically, with the knowledge that how we view and interpret the world colors how we analyze the world. Incorrect means of analysis means the method is blunted, empiricism without dialectical materialism leads to pitfalls like denying evolution or tectonic shifts. It is also entirely possible to come to correct conclusions without the correct world outlook, but this is often sporadic and accidental.

Where do ideas come from? Are they beamed into our heads, or do they come from how we live and the conditions we exist in? If you believe the former, then you are an empirical idealist, which is incorrect and leads to incorrect lines of analysis. What we know is based on how we practice and experiment, which informs how we can predict similar situations occurring. The more we do this, the better and more complete our knowledge. None of this is nonsense like "0=1," but instead is a definite process of knowledge building.

To re-center, my argument is that we learn more about the world as we interact with it, experiment with it, using empiricism. This leads us to connected conclusions, rather than specific and isolated ones. It's how we know human consumption is contributing to climate change. If we take the narrow and specific, isolated and disconnected view, then experiment is not properly used and leads to improper conclusions. That's why I am saying this vulgar empiricist stance is anti-scientific, and that science has advanced beyond it into better science.

If I present you data that says areas with a lot of storks have higher birthrates, do you think someone should set up an experiment to disprove how storks bring babies?

An actual scientist will be the first to disregard pure empiricism, because otherwise it would literally impossible for science to be done. An empiricist like Hume would be the first to tell you that causality does not exist, we can't guarantee the Sun will come up tomorrow, no matter how much observation or clever theories we have.