This brings me to a thought that has been coursing through my brain since James started his recent flurry of posts[1]. There seems to me to be a large and growing amount of hostility toward empiricism within the science fiction community.

Much as I hate to admit this, there's always been a faction of SF that was hostile to empericism, especially but not exclusively [1] over in the ANALOG wing of SF.

1: If I had not expunged my memories of this, I'd cite a particularly dreary Le Guin short story.