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, in order for one to be declared perfect, one has to adhere to the standard guidelines which should be followed in order to create a particular thing or use a previous model as a yardstick or even improve on it. It is one's belief that rationalism has not been a dominant epistemic approach. Kant and Locke, for example, have imbibed both epistemic approaches. To take it further most modern day individuals employ both approaches in their daily activities.

(ii)Spinoza
There was also another rationalist called Spinoza in whose views rationalism received its most systematic and rigorous expression. His main work was called ethics. According to Stumpf "ethics is concerned with actions that can be labeled right or wrong, good or bad, desirable or undesirable, worthy or unworthy. Also, ethics, is concerned with one's personal responsibility, duty, or obligation for his behaviour"(1983:1)His concern with ethics should be understood in its proper context in that both the means and goals of social science investigation are intrinsically bound up with ethical considerations, especially when conducting research involving human subjects, eg., protection of privacy through informed consent.
According to Hamlyn Spinoza provides "…a striking contrast with Descartes' ,who had little concern with things ethical"(1987:149).Spinoza felt that there are three kinds of knowledge, ie, knowledge of vague experience- when we generalize from casual and confused experience. The second kind is identified with reason, and the third one is intuition(Hamlyn,1987:152).The second and third kinds of knowledge reflect a rationalist view in that they are necessarily true, and reason regards things as necessary

(iii)Leibniz
According to Stumpf "Leibniz was dissatisfied with the way Descartes and Spinoza had described the nature of substance because he felt they had distorted our understanding of human nature"(1983:246).Spinoza defines substance as "that which is in itself: I mean that the conception of which does not depend on the conception of another thing from which it must be formed"(Stumpf,1983:241).Leibniz on the other hand takes it that substance as a basic form of existence must be absolutely simple ,for if it were complex it would be secondary to whatever it is composed of (Hamlyn,1987:159).This means that Leibniz and Spinoza somehow agree that substance should not depend on anything other that itself to exist. But one would argue that their view has defied logic in that every entity or substance is an "offspring" or a product of a particular "thing".
It is interesting that Leibniz, despite being a rationalist, sought empirical evidence to defend his principle that no two substances can differ solo numero (Hamlyn, 1987:162-163). He pointed to considerations that tree leaves are all different, and subscribed to similar evidence which was assessed through the newly invented microscope.

EMPIRICISM
According to Comte, empiricism is an "epistemological doctrine that all knowledge proper must be subject to canons of verification in terms of experience"(Hamlyn,1987:275). Marshall (1994:149) defines empiricism as a term "often used, loosely, to describe an orientation to research which emphasizes the collection of facts and observations, at the expense of conceptual reflection and theoretical enquiry". This implies that knowledge must undergo rigorous interrogation so as to be sure that it has not defied science.
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