Radical Empiricism

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Empiricism may be summarized by the now-famous axiom “Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses.” As a theory of knowledge, empiricism raises questions about the relationship between knowledge and experience. Historically, empiricism has been at the center of developing social research methodologies, yet although empirical observations are indispensable to notions of evidence in the sciences and in case study research there is no unanimous agreement on what should count as empirical evidence or how we should collect and interpret that information.

Radical (naïve or strict) empiricism is an extreme position that makes two bold claims: (1) Experience is the source of all our ideas, the raw material for thinking, and (2) experience (e.g., as immediate observation) is the standard by which we may justify knowledge. For radical empiricists, our everyday, commonsense ideas represent the world as it is given to our senses because our experiences of the world are direct and unmediated. However, if our knowledge of the world is derived only from our senses

and what is discovered through them, as radical empiricism maintains, we cannot ultimately be sure that there is a mind-independent world, that we have knowledge of it, or that the causes we attribute to given phenomena exist outside our own minds.

Typical empirical research takes the form of observation-based investigations that aim to discover and interpret facts, theories, and principles about the world. It is common for researchers to move beyond direct observation by offering explanations and generalizations. In the radical empiricist account, however, these are misguided aspirations. The use of theories, laws, and principles that generalize the world on the basis of observations (whether that may include taking measurements, samplings, surveys, interviews, or doing case studies) may serve as helpful summaries and correlations of sense data, but they are not certain representations or descriptions of the underlying structure of the (social) world. For instance, in case study research observations are often carried out in reallife contexts where one attempts to gain insight into phenomena through more or less direct interaction. The credibility of a description or an explanation for why something happened is most often measured by the degree of empirical support. However, the adoption of a strict or radical empiricist view places severe limitations on this kind of research. The more radical an empiricism—the more one places emphasis on immediate and direct sensory impressions or bare experience for knowledge—the more one becomes doubtful of other, nonexperiential knowledge claims, whether scientific or common sense.

Radical empiricism raises troubling questions for researchers. First, if all we know are our own isolated ideas (derived directly from experience), how might we know if our ideas correctly represent the external world and the apparent causes of social phenomena? Second, if we cannot justify knowledge that goes beyond direct experience, how may we have a comprehensive explanatory science? Or, more specific to case study research, how may we be justified in drawing general conclusions from limited sets of data?

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