Also, I’m not aware of many rabbinic authorities who have poskened on halacha on the basis of non-empirical scientific claims.
Well, the most obvious pointer if you want an early thing are all the sections of the Talmud dealing with the female menstrual cycle.
More modern examples also exist. The Chofetz Chaim repeated the claim that lice spontaneously generate in the Mishnah Beruah as why one poskens that killing them is ok on Shabbat. He’s only writing in the 1890s, 30 years after it was already conclusively established that spontaneous generation was wrong for microscopic organisms, and 200 hundred years after the scientific community had already established that it wasn’t true for macroscopic organisms. This is only the most commonly used text for poskening halacha for all of Judaism today.
Well, the most obvious pointer if you want an early thing are all the sections of the Talmud dealing with the female menstrual cycle.
More modern examples also exist. The Chofetz Chaim repeated the claim that lice spontaneously generate in the Mishnah Beruah as why one poskens that killing them is ok on Shabbat. He’s only writing in the 1890s, 30 years after it was already conclusively established that spontaneous generation was wrong for microscopic organisms, and 200 hundred years after the scientific community had already established that it wasn’t true for macroscopic organisms. This is only the most commonly used text for poskening halacha for all of Judaism today.