A dispute · spans 1 era
Rationalism vs. Empiricism
Where does knowledge come from – reason or experience?
The defining controversy of the 17th and 18th centuries. Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) argued that the deepest knowledge – mathematics, the principles of being – comes from pure reason; the senses are unreliable. Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) argued that all knowledge ultimately derives from sense experience; reason only rearranges what experience supplied. The dispute was effectively dissolved (or transformed) by Kant, who argued that both sides were right: experience supplies the material, but the mind supplies the form.
// The sides
Rationalism
The deepest knowledge – mathematics and the first principles of being – reason draws from itself, while the unreliable senses at most awaken what is already latent within it.
Empiricism
All knowledge ultimately derives from sense experience, and reason builds only from materials the senses have supplied; a claim that outruns all possible experience has outrun knowledge itself.
Synthesis
Experience supplies the matter of knowledge and the mind supplies the forms that order it, so knowledge arises only where the two meet.