This is a very important point.
As an example, Aristotle decided–from nothing more than philosophical arguments–that heavy weights fall faster than lighter weights, and that men have more teeth than women.
His arguments were brilliant . . . but still wrong. He never would have asked people to open their mouths so that he could count their teeth, because resorting to an examination of the physical world would be like cheating.
In his mind, the nature of the entire Universe could be deduced by thought alone . . . and again, he was wrong, and his thinking held back intellectual progress in the Western world for many hundreds of years.
Ironically, Gallileo defeated Aristotle on his own turf.
Gallileo asked what would happen if a heavy weight and a light weight were attached by a long, thin cord and dropped.
Would the combination fall faster than either weight by itself? Or would the lighter weight slow the fall of the heavy weight like a parachute?
The ony way to find out is to run an experiment, which Gallileo did by dropping weights off the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and found that all weights drop at the same speed.