• conforms_to::[[Gloss Form Contract]]
• authored_by::[[Deep Context Community]]
• has_lifecycle::[[Seed Stage]]
• has_curation::[[Working Draft]]
• in_practice_domain::[[Deep Context Architecture]]

Empirical Observation

The epistemic status of an Observation whose claim rests on a specific measurement, experiment, or direct observation the author can name in the Grounds section. An Empirical Observation declares has_epistemic_status::[[Empirical Observation]] and carries a Grounds section that names what was measured or observed, how, and when. The Grounds is not a summary of a secondary source; it is the direct observational basis itself.

The epistemic status is one of four introduced by Classify Observations by Epistemic Status With Matched Grounds, each pairing with a distinct Grounds shape. Empirical sits opposite [[Retrospective Observation]] (whose Grounds name a record or reconstruction rather than a direct measurement) and opposite [[On-Faith Observation]] (whose Grounds name an adopted source the claim rests on without independent verification). The four statuses are not quality ranks; they are different kinds of grounding the Grounds section must match.

An Empirical Observation claim can still be wrong — a measurement can be flawed, an instrument can be miscalibrated, an observation can be misinterpreted. The epistemic status carries the kind of grounding, not a guarantee of correctness. The Observation's ## What Would Revise It section names the conditions under which the claim would be withdrawn or amended.