A person who believes that knowledge comes primarily from sensory experience and observation rather than from reason or innate ideas.
From 'empiric' plus the suffix '-ist' (one who practices or believes), formalized in the 17th-18th centuries to describe philosophers like David Hume and John Locke who emphasized experience over pure reason.
Empiricists were rebels against philosophy's old guard—Locke famously said the mind starts as a 'blank slate' written on by experience, not born with knowledge already installed!
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