empire (empir)

[ The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia: Dictionary empire Your Maiestie (my most gracious Soueraigne) haue shewed your selfe to all the world, for this one and thirty yeares space of your gloriousraigne, aboue all other Princes of Christen do me, not onely fortunate, but also most sufficient vertuous and worthy of Empire. Putten ham , Arte of Eng. Poesie, p. 37. He here stalks Upon the heads of Romans, and their princes, Familiarly to empire . B. Jonson, Sejanus, iv. 3. Westward the course of empire takes its way. Bp. Berkeley , Arts and Learning in America. If we do our duties as honestly and as much in the fear of God as our forefathers did, we need not trouble ourselves much about other titles to empire . Lowell, Among my Books, 1st ser., p. 244. 2. The country, region, or union of states or territories under the jurisdiction and dominion of an emperor or other powerful sovereign or government; usually, a territory of greater extent than a kingdom, which may be, and often is, of small extent: as, the Roman or the Ru ian empire . The designation empire has been a umed in modern times by some small or homogeneous monarchies, generally ephemeral; but properly an empire is an aggregate of conquered, colonized, or confederated states, each with its own government subordinate or tributary to that of the empire as a whole. Such were and are all the great historical empires; and in this sense the name is applied appropriately to any large aggregation of separate territories under one monarch, whatever his title may be: as, the A yrian, Babylonian, and Persian empires ; the empire of Alexander the Great; the British empire , etc. See emperor , and Holy Roman Empire , below. 3. Supreme control; governing influence; rule; sway: as, the empire of reason or of truth. IMG:content-0402.png:[blocks in formation] Circle of the empire. See circle. - Eastern Empire, or Empire of the East, originally, that division of the Roman empire which had its seat in Constantinople. Its final separation from the Western Empire dates from the death of Theodosius the Great (A. D. 395), whose sons Arcadius and Honor i us received respectively the eastern and western divisions of the Roman dominion. After the fall of the Western Empire, the Empire of the East is commonly known as the Byzantine empire. It continued until the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. - Empire City, the city of New York: so called as being the chief city of the Empire State, and the commercial metropolis of the United States. - Empire State, the State of New York: so called from its superior population and wealth as compared with the other States of the Union. - Holy Roman Empire, the German-Roman empire in western and central Europe (in later times commonly styled the German empire ), which, after a lapse of more than three hundred years, reunited a large portion of the territories formerly belonging to the Western Empire. The union of the German royal and Roman imperial crowns began with Charles the Great or Charlemagne, king of the Franks, who was crowned emperor by the Pope at Rome A. D. 800; but the line of German kings who were at the same time Holy Roman emperors begins properly with Otho the Great, crowned emperor in 962. The empire was regarded as the temporal form of a theoretically universal dominion, whose spiritual head was the Pope, and the earlier emperors were crowned at Rome by the spiritual rulers of Christen dom. The empire continued under monarchs of the Saxon, Franc on i an, and Hohenstaufen dynasties, pa ing in 1273 to the Austrian house of Hapsburg, the members of which line remained in uninterrupted po e ion of the empire from 1438 until its final extinction in 1806. It had long previously lost the greater part of the external territories which had entitled it to be called Roman; and its final di olution was due to the conquests and encroachments of Napoleon I. (See emperor.) The emperors were elected by certain of the more powerful German princes called electors, whose number was definitely fixed at seven by the Golden Bull of 1356, and remained at that number with but slight changes. The Celestial Empire. See celestial. -Western Empire, the distinctive designation of the western portion of the Roman world after its division into two independent empires in A. D. 395. (See Eastern Em pire, above.) Its power very rapidly declined under the inroads of barbarians and other adverse influences, and it was finally extinguished in A. D. 476. =Syn. 1. Sway, dominion, rule, reign, government, supremacy. empirema (em-pi-rē'mä), n.; pl. empire mat a (-ma-tä). [NL., England has seized the empire ship of India. Library Mag., July, 1886. empiric (em-pir'ik), a. and n. [Formerly em pirick; 1903 *παρ = E. fare, go.] I. a. 1. Same as empiri cal.-2. Versed in physical experimentation: as, an empiric alchemist.-3. Of or pertaining to the medical empirics. It is accounted an error to commit a natural body to em piric physicians. Bacon , Advancement of Learning, i. 17. II. n. 1. [cap.] One of an ancient sect of Greek physicians who maintained that practice or experience, and not theory, is the foundation of the science of medicine. Among the Greek physicians, those who founded their practice on experience called themselves empirics ; those who relied on theory, methodists; and those who held a middle course, dogmatists. Fleming, Vocab. of Philos. (ed. Krauth), p. 157. 2. An experimenter in medical practice, destitute of adequate knowledge; an irregular or unscientific physician; more distinctively, a quack or charlatan. It is not safe for the Church of Christ when bishops learn what be long eth unto government, as empirics learn physic, by killing of the sick. Hooker , Eccles. Polity, vii. 24. This is the cause why empirics and old women are more happy many times in their cures than learned physicians, because they are more religious in holding their medicines. Bacon, Advancement of Learning, ii. 198. There are many empiricks in the world who pretend to infallible methods of curing all patients. Bp . Atterbury , Sermons, II. viii. Empiricks and mountebanks. Shaftesbury , Advice to an Author, ii. § 2. 3. In general, one who depends mainly upon experience or intuition; one whose procedure in any field of action or inquiry is too exclusively empirical. IMG:content-0403.png:[blocks in formation] Vague generalisations may form the stock-in-trade of the political empiric , but he is an empiric notwithstanding. Stubbs , Medieval and Modern Hist., p. 91. =Syn. 2. Mountebank , etc. See quack , n. empirical (em-pir'i-kal), a. [ In philosophical language the term empirical means simply what belongs to or is the product of experience or observation. Sir W. Hamilton . Now here again we may observe the error into which Locke was led by confounding the cause of our ideas with their occasion. There can be no idea, he argues, prior to experience; granted. Therefore he concludes the mind previous to it is, as it were, a tabula ras a, owing every notion which it gains primarily to an empirical source. J. D. Morell. The empirical generalization that guides the farmer in his rotation of crops serves to bring his actions into concord with certain of the actions going on in plants and soil. H. Spencer , Prin, of Biol., § 28. 2. Derived, as a general proposition, from a narrow range of observation, without any warrant for its exactitude or for its wider validity. The empirical diagram only represents the relative number and position of the parts, just as a careful observation shows them in the flower; but if the diagram also indicates the places where members are suppre ed,...I call it a theoretical diagram. Sachs, Botany (trans.), p. 525. It is not at all impo ible that Henry II. may have been among the pupils of Vacarius: certainly he was more of a lawyer than mere empirical education could make him. Stubbs , Medieval and Modern Hist., p. 303. 3. Pertaining to the medical practice of empiric, in either of the medical senses of that word; hence, charlatanical; quackish. The empirical treatment he submitted to his end. hastened Goldsmith, Bolingbroke. Empirical certainty, cognition, ego, idealism, etc. See the nouns. - Empirical formula or law, a formula which sufficiently satisfies certain observations, but which is not supported by any established theory or probable hypothesis, so that it cannot be relied upon far beyond Thus, the formula of Dulong and Petit expre ing the relation between the temperature of a body and its radiative power cannot be extended to the calculation of the the conditions of the observations upon which it rests. heat of the sun, since there is no reason for supposing that it would approximate to the truth so far beyond the temperatures at which the experiments were made. empirically (em-pir'i-kal-i), adv. In an empirical manner; by experiment; according to experience; without science; in the manner of quacks. Every science begins by accumulating observations, and presently generalizes these empirically . H. Spencer , Data of Ethics, § 22. ence or practice without knowledge, esp. in medicine, empiricism, empirical; reliance on direct experience and observation rather than on theory; empirical method; especially, an undue reliance upon mere individual experience, emplaster He [Radcliffe] knew, it is true, that experience, the safest guide after the mind is prepared for her instructions by previous institution, is apt, without such preparation, to degenerate to a vulgar and presumptuous em piricism . V. Knox , E ays, xxxviii. At present, he [Bacon) reflected, some were content to rest in empiricism and isolated facts; others ascended too hastily to first principles. E. A. Abbott , Bacon, p. 344. What is called empiricism is the application of superficial truths, recognized in a loose, unsystematic way, to immediate and special needs. L. F. Ward, Dynam. Sociol., II. 203. 2. In med., the practice of empirics; hence, quackery; the pretension of an ignorant person to medical skill. Shudder to destroy life, either by the naked knife or by the surer and safer medium of empiricism. Dwight. 3. The metaphysical theory that all ideas are derived from sensuous experience that is, that there are no innate or a prior i conceptions. The terms Empiricism , Empiricist, Empirical, although commonly employed by metaphysicians with contempt to mark a mode of investigation which admits no higher source than experience (by them often unwarrantably restricted to Sensation), may be accepted without demur, since even the flavor of contempt only serves to empha size the distinction. G. H. Lewes, Probs, of Life and Mind, I. ii. § 14. empiricist (em-pir'i-sist), n. [ empiric + -ist .] 1. One who believes in philosophical empir cal empiricism; one who regards sensuous experience as the sole source of all ideas and knowledge. Berkeley, as a consistent empiricist , saw that Sensation shuts itself up within its own home, and does not include its object. The object must be supplied from without, and he supplied it provisionally by the name of God. N. A. Rev. , CXX. 409. The empiricist can take no cognizance of anything that transcends experience. New Princeton Rev., II. 169. 2. A medical empiric. empirictict, empiricutict (em-pi-rik'tik, empir-i-kū'tik), a . [An unmeaning extension of empiric.] Empirical. The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiri cutick . Shak., Cor., ii. 1. empirism (em'pi-rizm), n. [= F. empirisme = Sp. Pg. It. empirismo = D. Dan. empirisme = Sw. empirism, It is to this sense [second muscular], mainly, that we owe the conception of force, the origin of which empirism could never otherwise explain. G. S. Hall , German Culture, p. 219. empiristic (em-pi-ris'tik), a . Of or pertaining to empiricism or to the empiricists; empirical. [Rare.] The empiristic view which Helmholtz defends is that the space-determinations we perceive are in every case products of a proce of unconscious inference. W. James, Mind, XII. 545.