I agree that empiricism is important, but I have to push back on some things here. I hope to be polite, as I appreciate the courage that it takes to write an article and put one's ideas out there.

I was building software during the 80s, when the "New Product Game" article was published. We were not using waterfall. In fact, during the 80s, every project I was on except for one was extremely agile.

During the 90s waterfall took over, thanks to PMI. The Agile movement finally rejected that, but it is important to realize that before Agile, there was waterfall, and before that, there was A LOT of agility.

Also, Plato championed dialectic discussion, which is a crucial element of agility.

And Scrum did not invent empiricism - one does not need Scrum for that. The sciences are based on having both theorists and experimentalists: without both, science cannot advance.

It is not about choosing one over the other: we need both.