Rationalism vs. Empiricism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry)

Peter Markie wrote this Rationalism vs. Empiricism entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Its authority comes from the same editorial model that gives the Encyclopedia its standing generally, a named specialist author writing a signed, peer-reviewed entry that is then kept current through dated revisions, rather than a fixed-edition print reference that can grow stale or an anonymous crowd-edited page with no accountable author. Its limit is that as a survey entry on a very broad philosophical debate spanning centuries and many individual thinkers, it necessarily treats any one philosopher's specific position at a summary level, so a claim needing close engagement with one rationalist or empiricist's own argument is better served by a focused study of that philosopher.