Why this word is great
EMPIRIC — [Adjective/Noun] As an adjective, it describes knowledge or methods grounded in observation and direct experience; as a noun, it denotes a practitioner, especially in medicine, who relies on such practical experience, often with a pejorative hint of the quack. From the Latin empiricus, from the Ancient Greek ἐμπειρικός (empeirikós, "experienced"), from ἐμπειρία (empeiría, "experience"), from ἔμπειρος (émpeiros, "experienced in"), from ἐν (en, "in") + πεῖρα (peîra, "trial, experiment"). Unlike the theoretician, who constructs reality from abstract first principles, or the sanctioned authority, who commands from a credentialed pulpit, the empiric is a creature of the grimy, specific, and untidy world. It is the ship’s surgeon who knows which poultice staunches a wound from having seen it work, the gardener who intuits the frost by the ache in an old scar, and the charlatan peddling a tonic that, by luck or lore, sometimes cures—a testament to the raw, unvarnished truth that all knowledge begins in the body, before it is distilled, or corrupted, into doctrine.