[Revised entry by Nora Mills Boyd and James Bogen on January 12, 2026.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Scientists obtain a great deal of the evidence they use by collecting and producing empirical results. Much of the standard philosophical literature on this subject comes from 20th century logical empiricists, their followers, and critics who embraced their issues while objecting to some of their aims and assumptions. Discussions about empirical evidence have tended to focus on epistemological questions regarding its role in theory testing. This entry follows that precedent, even though empirical evidence also plays important…

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