There’s a popular YouTube channel titled ‘Bite-sized Philosophy,’ which as its name suggests provides concise summaries pertaining to philosophical matters.
Here is my bite-sized summary of Empiricism vs. Rationalism. Consider a cooking range that has four or more individual stove tops. There is also a ‘key’ that shows which knob corresponds to which stove top. It’s like really simple IQ test:
If one puts a pot on the upper-left stove top, then he would turn the dial that corresponds to the upper-left stove top.
For an empiricist, knowledge is acquired though the senses. This means the empirical approach is to try each knob until the flame matches with the pot. The rationalist approach is to use the coding system, to avoid having to try each knob. This is how rationalism is ‘smarter’ than empiricism. Rationalism also requires faith, because one must convince themselves that the abstract corresponds to the real, without having to verify it.