Q&A: Was the Sages’ method empirical?
Was the Sages’ method empirical?
Question
Hello!
Somewhere here on the site I saw that you wrote that the Sages (the Talmud) followed the approach that was customary in their time. They did not test their theories by an empirical standard.
I wanted to point out Rabbi Y. Inbal’s book Oral Torah, where he goes to great length to prove (p. 458 and onward) that the Sages’ method was observation, not Aristotelian.
Dr. David Margaliot wrote in his book The Sages of Israel as Physicians, p. 27: “Unlike the Greek sages, the Sages based their knowledge on experiments.”
And see at length Inbal’s discussion and his sources.
Answer
Hello,
Steinberg and Mordechai Halperin write this as well. Even so, it is clear that the Sages were part of the intellectual landscape of their time, and they did not insist on surveys and empirical testing in places where things seemed clear to them based on reasoning alone. Only when they did not know something and wanted to check it did they sometimes use an empirical method. But of course this is not unique to the Sages; Aristotle too conducted experiments of his own. So although I have not read Inbal’s remarks, it seems to me that what I wrote still stands.