empiricism 的词源

“依赖直接经验和观察，而非理论；”这个词最早出现在1650年代，起初是医学领域的术语，由empiric（经验主义者）和-ism（主义）组合而成。最初的医学含义带有贬义，指的是“江湖医生；无知者假装具备医学技能”。这种贬义后来延续到了更广泛的意义上，特别是指对个人经验的过度依赖，而非理论指导。从1796年起，这个词还被用来描述一种哲学观点，即将经验视为知识的唯一来源。

Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I should call it that of radical empiricism, in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I say 'empiricism' because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience; and I say 'radical,' because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the half way empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all experience has got to square. The difference between monism and pluralism is perhaps the most pregnant of all the differences in philosophy. [William James, preface to "The Sentiment of Rationality" in "The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy," 1897]

如果让我为这种态度起个简短的名字，我会称之为radical empiricism（激进经验主义），尽管我知道在哲学中，这种简化的称呼往往会造成误解。我之所以使用“经验主义”，是因为它愿意将自己对事实的最坚定结论视为假设，并承认这些结论可能会随着未来的经验而改变；而我称之为“激进”，是因为它将一元论本身也视为假设。与许多在实证主义、不可知论或科学自然主义名下流行的半途而废的经验主义不同，它并不教条地认为一元论是所有经验都必须符合的真理。哲学中一元论与多元论之间的区别，或许是所有哲学差异中最重要的。[威廉·詹姆斯，《理性情感》前言，摘自《信仰的意志及其他通俗哲学论文》，1897年]