It's a specific form of philosophy called Empiricism, actually.
Definitions of empiricism on the Web:
* the claim that all knowledge or all meaningful discourse about the world is related to sensory experience or observation. Logical empiricism (or logical positivism) combined modern logical analysis with the demands of empiricism and was most famous for its verificationist theory of meaning.
www.filosofia.net/materiales/rec/glosaen.htm * The proposition that the only source of true knowledge is experience. Search for knowledge through experiment and observation. Denial that knowledge can be obtained a priori.
www.carm.org/atheism/terms.htm * In its strong form, the thesis that there is no knowable reality behind appearances. Thus, it is the job of science to catalog the formal relations which hold between appearances without claims of describing reality. See phenomenalism <Discussion> <References> Chris Eliasmith
www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/E.html * the acceptance of sense experience as the source and test of truth.
www.willdurant.com/glossary.htm * (philo.) - A belief that experience alone is the source of all knowledge.
www.reasoned.org/glossary.htm * Branch of philosophy which sees all knowledge as being based in experience -- for example, the experience of the senses -- as distinct from theory or logic.
www.adamranson.freeserve.co.uk/critical%20concepts.htm * reliance on observable and quantifiable data.
farahsouth.cgu.edu/dictionary/
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