http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
I'm wondering if anyone identifies with empiricism, or is opposed to it, or even considers themselves an anti-empiricist.
Lately I've been considering my conflict with a very scientistic friend in terms of empirical vs idealistic. I'm fairly open to experience, and
this individual manifests many of the "signs" of being closed to experience. He, and most of my peer group, reject any idealistic adjuncts to the story of "science is everything, everything we can know has been reduced and modelled". (I'm understanding why it was so profound for the mystic I met a while ago to have met a fellow "para-scientist": an individual who believes in science where it can produce knowledge, but seeks other methods elsewhere).
Due to my education, I used t be very scientistic, but the more plants I ingest, and the more life-and-death, altered consciousness, and communal experiences I have, the more I think that science has a distinguished role in scientific knowledge, but is utterly irrelevant to the various forms of knowledge that humans might be able to have. I always hold the possibility that plants and spirits can "talk" to us, and that synchronicity "exists" as a potential, while people around me reject it off-hand due to their narrative of scientism....