As man progressed through the various stages of evolution, it
is assumed that at a certain point he began to ponder the world around
him. Of course, these first attempts fell short of being scholarly,
probably consisting of a few grunts and snorts at best. As time passed
on, though, these ideas persisted and were eventually tackled by the
more intellectual, so-called philosophers. Thus, excavation of "the
external world" began. As the authoritarinism of the ancients gave way
to the more liberal views of the modernists, two main positions
concerning epistemology and the nature of the world arose. The first
view was exemplified by the empiricists, who stated that all knowledge
comes from the senses. In opposition, the rationalists maintained that
knowledge comes purely from deduction, and that this knowledge is
processed by certain innate schema in the mind. Those that belonged to
the empiricist school of thought developed quite separate and distinct
ideas......
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