Empiricism is a theory thought up and proposed by the great Grecian philosopher, Aristotle. Empiricism is the perception that knowledge is gained through personal experiences and these experiences are much more valuable than rational thinking. It is, simply put, the general concept of “nurture over nature”.

I believe that a person’s development is somewhat influenced by nature but mainly by nurture; to me, the idea that a human is born already knowing (albeit subconsciously) everything they’re ever going to know, is unbelievable. I have enjoyed many life-shaping experiences in my life thus far such but one in particular took place last summer when my grandparents took me to Italy for two weeks. In this time I acquired a plethora of knowledge and it was solely through my experiences and had little to nothing to do with any inborn characteristics or thoughts of mine. I used to travel a lot as a child; we routinely made trips to England to visit my grandfather’s family, we went on family vacations to Jamaica and my family and I lived in Germany for about a year when I was eight years old. However, my trip to Italy was my first that I was going as a mature thinker. We went to Pisa, the Cinque Terre, Volterra, San Gimignano and Florence during our two week stay and I learned a multitude of knowledge about every city’s different culture, art, history and also a lot about myself as an adult. For example, we stayed in Florence for approximately three days and each day we journeyed to a different part of the old city. One day we went to the ancient apothecary (The Santa Maria Novella Pharmacy), walked around the Duomo, visited a few different churches and cathedrals, another day we wandered around the Uffizi gallery and feasted our eyes on some of the most famous artwork ever created, traveled across the Ponte Vecchio, and battled the hectic Florence street market. The last day we hiked the Boboli Gardens and learned about the reign of the Medici family in Florence. Throughout all of this, I gained so much knowledge and it was all through experience. However, the greatest personal gain was finding myself as an independent, fully formed human. I learned that I could confidently walk around the streets of Florence, or any city, and speak Italian to the natives and I wasn’t forced to pay attention to anything- I was truly and keenly interested to learn about culture and history, which sounds extremely adult.

My trip to Italy was a learning experience for various reasons. I can confidently say that had I not gone, I wouldn’t have as good of an understanding about Italian life or about myself. That’s why I believe empiricism, and the concepts of nature/nurture to be an extremely valid, relevant, and important theory in the subject of psychology.