Empiricism in the Philosophy of Science

There are two main aims of this thesis: the first is to demonstrate thatthere is an important version of empiricism - "methodological empiricism"- which is a central part of the empiricist tradition but has been neglected incurrent philosophy of science. The second aim is to develop methodologicalempiricism in light of current science. The first aim is met by first articulatingwhat I take methodological empricism to mean, alongside articulating themore dominant version of empiricism - "epistemic empiricism". I explicateboth via several characteristics for each, and then trace a history of bothpositions from Ancient Western philosophy up until current times. Finally,I give evidence of the neglect of methodological empiricism in currentphilosophy of science. The second aim is met by, first, presenting four criteriafor a current version of methodological empiricism that are directly derivedfrom the characteristics of methodological empiricism through its history. Ithen consider three topics within recent philosophy of science that prima faciepose a challenge to methodological empiricism, all of which can be broadlycharacterised as appearing to be non-empirical in some way - analogueconfirmation, philosophy of computer simulations, and non-empirical theoryconfirmation. It is argued that, ultimately, analogue confirmation andcomputer simulation are compatible with methodological empiricism, butthat non-empirical theory confirmation is not. I argue that this should givesus good reason to reject non-empirical theory confirmation.