A natural philosopher explores human ideas through an empirical lens. They look at philosophy using a science-first approach. They focus on what is provable and dabble in the rest. This is different than belief and philosophies not based on empirical data. For example, some rely on intuition or personal feelings as their primary guide, valuing subjective experience over objective evidence. Others lean on pure rational reflection, reasoning their way to conclusions without grounding them in observable reality. Still, others use unverifiable observations—claims that cannot be tested, repeated, or falsified.
Philosophers—empirical or not—differ from scientists, who uses the scientific method to discover new ideas and new descriptions of the universe. While a scientist might go so far as to dismiss the unprovable outright, the non-empiricist approach either dismisses empirical data in favor of a belief or uses other techniques to decide what to believe. Before the term scientist existed, natural philosophers blended observation, logic, and curiosity, sometimes mixing scientific insight with unfounded beliefs. Unlike scientists, who deal strictly in absolutes, natural philosophers are comfortable with uncertainty. Science has provided greater clarity to philosophers. As science advances, the realm of the unknown shrinks, and the boundaries of the unknowable come into sharper focus.
A natural philosopher prioritizes evidence while remaining open to possibilities beyond current knowledge, carefully distinguishing between what can be known, what can be explored, and what may always remain unknowable. They sit in the middle, accepting reasonable things as true until proven otherwise. This approach traces back to the earliest thinkers who sought to explain the natural world without invoking the supernatural.
