Document D
Empiricism and The Scientific Method: The Scientific Revolution changed the way many Europeans thought about how to acquire knowledge. The Scientific Revolution shifted away from religion and ancient texts and instead shifted toward empiricism. Empiricism is the idea that you acquire knowledge from observation. For example, if you want to learn why the leaves change color, you wouldn’t turn to religion or books from the past. You would observe the leaves and then come to conclusions based on those observations. In this case, examining the internal properties of leaves and studying how those internal properties react and respond to environmental factors. Empiricism is at the heart of the scientific method. The scientific method is a method or process for learning about the world. Sometimes, based on observations, scientists run experiments to determine how the world works.
How does empiricism represent a challenge to traditional ways to acquire knowledge?
