Whether we call it “empiricism” (which I will for lexical ease), or “reason,” or “science,” or “causal studies,” the core principles are always the same: the collection of perceptible data and the testing of theories against them using careful thought. This way of thinking had been the dominant mode in the West since the late seventeenth century. In the philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s summary, that system requires that “all statements with claims to truth must be public, communicable, testable—capable of verification or falsification by methods open to and accepted by any rational
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