Your characterisation of science looks like a straw man. Science IS physical experiment. Sure, the media constantly focuses on theorists but that's just part of science. Its physical experiments that create the facts, without them theory is nothing.

An aspect of science that is different from pure empiricism is the push for parsimony, short equations with few variables, E=mc^2 etc.

The pure empiricist may use machine learning to solve a problem, there may be millions of adjustable parameters in the model. As long as it works, he cares not.