Editing Scientific Revolution (section)

===Empiricism===
{{main|Empiricism}}
The Aristotelian scientific tradition's primary mode of interacting with the world was through observation and searching for "natural" circumstances through reasoning. Coupled with this approach was the belief that rare events which seemed to contradict theoretical models were aberrations, telling nothing about nature as it "naturally" was. During the Scientific Revolution, changing perceptions about the role of the scientist in respect to nature, the value of evidence, experimental or observed, led towards a scientific methodology in which empiricism played a large role.{{fact|date=April 2023}}

By the start of the Scientific Revolution, empiricism had already become an important component of science and natural philosophy. [[European science in the Middle Ages|Prior thinkers]], including the early-14th-century [[Nominalism|nominalist]] philosopher [[William of Ockham]], had begun the intellectual movement toward empiricism.<ref>[[#Hannam|Hannam]], p. 162</ref> The term British empiricism came into use to describe philosophical differences perceived between two of its founders [[Francis Bacon]], described as empiricist, and [[René Descartes]], who was described as a rationalist. [[Thomas Hobbes]], [[George Berkeley]], and [[David Hume]] were the philosophy's primary exponents who developed a sophisticated empirical tradition as the basis of human knowledge.{{fact|date=April 2023}}

An influential formulation of empiricism was [[John Locke]]'s ''[[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding]]'' (1689), in which he maintained that the only true knowledge that could be accessible to the human mind was that which was based on experience. He wrote that the human mind was created as a ''[[tabula rasa]]'', a "blank tablet," upon which sensory impressions were recorded and built up knowledge through a process of reflection.{{fact|date=April 2023}}