Somehow I think a case could be made that radical empiricism is a useful model for software development...i.e. one's a priori ideas about customers, markets, and the utility of software are not as useful as customer feedback:

And if our dreamer pleases to try whether the glowing heat of a glass furnace be barely a wandering imagination in a drowsy man's fancy, by putting his hand into it, he may perhaps be wakened into a certainty greater than he could wish

http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/johnlocke/BOOKIVChap...