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I do believe that Darwin was an empiricist in practice, however when it came to writing his data, he was cautious because his ideas were so revolutionary.  (His cautiousness is also seen with his actions when he did not publish his findings until years after his research and conclusions were reached).  When we analyzed the actual semantics of The Origin of Species, he used ‘I’ and ‘we’ many times when presenting his evidence, so as to make it more personal and read more like a novel.  Despite this, I still feel as though Darwin had concrete and substantial evidence supporting his claims even if he did not present it in a conventional scientific manner.  I also think that Darwin reached his conclusions of natural selection and evolution because he had empirical data and from this data he formed his theory.  The data that he had was from his own research with the finches and pigeons, as well as the information that other scientists, such as Malthus, had uncovered.  I believe he used a combination of all of this data to influence and shape his theories.