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|Brief=A British philosopher who championed empiricism, arguing that all knowledge was derived from experience|Summary='''John Locke (1632-1704)''' was a British philosopher, writer, political activist, medical researcher, Oxford academic, and government official|Summary=Locke was a champion of '''empiricism''', arguing that all knowledge was derived from experience. Among his most notable works is ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'', which provides a defense defence of empiricism and the origins of ideas and understanding. In this work, Locke rejects the idea of innate principles, and argues that all knowledge comes from experience. Locke also wrote on religious toleration and social contract theory. He opposed authoritarianism and argued that individuals should use reason to discover the truth.|Historical Context=Locke lived in politically turbulent times for Englandwas born into an English Puritan family of modest means, but was able to obtain an excellent education by way of his father's connections. Conflicts between [[CiteRef::Dunn (2003)]] In 1647, at the King age of fifteen, he began studies at Westminster School, considered London's best. At twenty, he began studies at Christ Church College, Oxford. His studies focused on logic, metaphysics, and languages taught within the Parliament and between Protestantsframework of '''Aristotelian scholasticism''', Anglicansfor which he developed an intense dislike. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)| pp. 3-4]][[CiteRef::Milton (1994)]] This was more than a century after Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) had posited his '''heliocentric cosmology''' in 1543, and Catholics led to civil war forty years after Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) published his observations with the telescope in 1610. These developments had cast Aristotelianism into doubt. [[CiteRef::Westfall (1980)|p. 6]] Like many ambitious students of the 1640'stime, when Locke was sought alternative resources outside the formal curriculum, and such resources were abundant at Oxford. He became involved with a teenager. King Charles I discussion group organized by John Wilkins (1614-1672)and was defeated exposed to the '''experimental philosophy''' and killedthe ideas of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) who argued for an '''inductive methodology''' for science. In The Wilkins group was the nucleus of what would later become the 1650'sRoyal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge', known simply as the monarchy was abolished '''Royal Society'''. The Royal Society became a formal institution in favor of Oliver Cromwellthe 1660's and England's Protectoratemain society for the promotion of natural philosophy. The protectorate collapsed and society would set itself in opposition to the Aristotelian scholasticism of the monarchy was restored in 1660universities, around advocating the time study of nature rather than of ancient texts. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)|p. 4]] Locke finished his bachelor's degreenotebooks indicate a strong interest in medicine and chemistry. In 1668, King James II was overthrown in favor He attended the lectures of William of Orange the great anatomist Thomas Willis (1621-1675) and his wife Mary in the Glorious Revolutiontook careful notes. [[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)|p. 217]][[CiteRef::Uzgalis Anstey (20162011)|p. 36]]

Although After Locke was born into a family of modest means, he was able to obtain an excellent education by way of received his fatherbachelor's connections. In 1647, at the age of fifteendegree in 1656, he began studies remained at Westminster School, considered London's best. At twenty, he began studies at Christ Church College, Oxfordto study medicine. His studies focused on logic, metaphysics, and languages taught within the framework of '''Aristotelian scholasticism'''He worked closely with Dr. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)| pp. 3-4]] This was more than a century after Nicholas Copernicus Thomas Sydenham (14731624-15431689) had posited , renown for his '''heliocentric cosmology''' pioneering work in 1543, and forty years after Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) published his observations with the telescope in 1610. Both were strong challenges to Aristotelianismtreatment of infectious diseases. [[CiteRef::Westfall Dunn (19802003)|p. 6]] Like many ambitious students of the time, Locke doubted Aristotelian scholasticism and sought alternative resources outside the formal curriculum. Such resources were abundant at Oxford. He became involved with a discussion group organized by John Wilkins Robert Boyle (16141627-16721691). In succeeded John Wilkins as the leader of the Wilkins scientific groupat Oxford, and became Locke was exposed 's scientific tutor. Boyle ascribed to the '''experimental corpuscular mechanistic philosophy''' and the ideas of Francis Bacon associated with [[Rene Descartes]] (15611596-16261650) who argued , and was noted for an '''inductive methodology''' for sciencehis physical experiments. The Wilkins group was corpuscular philosophy held that the nucleus visible properties of what would later become the natural world were due to interactions between invisibly small particles or corpuscles. Locke read Boyle'''Royal Society''' s and Descartes works, as well as those of EnglandPierre Gassendi (1592-1655), which became a formal institution who emphasized the role of the senses in the 1660'sknowledge. The society would set itself in opposition to He learned from his experimentalist associates and from the Aristotelian scholasticism writings of the universitiesGassendi, advocating the study to be skeptical of nature rather than of ancient textsDescartes' '''rationalism'''. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)|p. 4]] Natural philosophy and medicine were considered closely related, and Bacon's call for a 'great instauration' of knowledge included medicine. Locke's notebooks indicate a strong interest in medicine and chemistry. He attended the lectures of the great anatomist Thomas Willis [[CiteRef::Dunn (1621-16752003) and took careful notes. ]][[CiteRef::Rogers Fisher (19822014)|p. 217]]He accepted Descartes' corpuscular view of matter, his dualistic view that mind and matter were separate substances, and believed the world to contain genuine causal interactions between physical objects. [[CiteRef::Anstey Rogers (20111982)|p. ]]

Locke received his bachelor's degree in 1656. He was elected a senior student of Christ Church College and decided became personal physician to study medicine. When John Wilkins left Oxford, the new leader of the scientific group became Robert Boyle Anthony Ashley Cooper (16271621-16911683). Boyle ascribed to the '''corpuscular mechanistic philosophy''' associated with [[Rene Descartes]] (1596-1650Lord Ashley), which held that the visible properties of the natural world were due to interactions between invisibly small particles or corpuscles. He is noted for his physical experiments. Boyle became Locke's scientific tutor. Locke read Boyle's works and those of Descartes, though he also learned from his experimentalist associates to be skeptical of Descartes' rationalism. Locke became a physician, and was personal physician to Lord Ashley leading English political figure during the 1670's and 1680's. [[CiteRef::Dunn (2003)]] He was an early member of the Royal Society and knew most of the major English natural philosophers, including [[Isaac Newton]] (1643-1727) and some continental ones as well. This community was concerned with arguing for the reliability of observation and experiment as a means of acquiring knowledge as opposed to Aristotelian intuition or Cartesian rationalism. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)|p. 4]] Locke's most important contribution to this argument was his ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'', published in 1689. While preparing Locke and Newton became directly acquainted while Locke was finishing this essay work. When Locke read Newton's ''Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' and , published in 1687, he found little need to revise his essay. Newton's epistemological views were rather similar to his own, both having . Both had absorbed the views current in the Royal Society. Locke's essay received its warmest reception from the members of the society, and can be deemed an expression of their collective understanding of scientific methodology. [[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]]

==== In the second book, Locke begins his positive account of how people acquire knowledge. "Let us suppose", he writes, "the mind to have no ideas in it, to be like ''white paper'' with nothing written on Innate Principles ====it. How then does it come to be written on?...To this I answer, in one word, from ''experience''". Locke's belief that all knowledge comes from sense experience is '''empiricism'''.[[CiteRef::Locke (2015b)|p. 18]] Unlike Descartes, Locke does not seriously entertain the possibility that his senses are fundamentally unreliable. He writes that, "We certainly find that pleasure or pain follows upon the application to us of certain objects whose existence we perceive (or dream we perceive!) through our senses; and this certainly is as great as we need for practical purposes, which are the only purposes we ought to have". [[CiteRef::Locke (2015d)|p. 202]] When our senses are applied to particular perceptible objects, they convey into the mind perceptions of those things. This '''sensation''' is the source of most of our ideas. We can also perceive the workings of our own mind within us, which gives us ideas of the mind's own operations such as "perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different things our minds do", a process which Locke calls '''reflection'''. [[CiteRef::Locke (2015b)|p. 18]] Simple ideas produced by these processes can be grouped into complex ideas, such as those of substances and modes. '''Substances''' are independently existing things like God, angels, humans, animals, plants, and constructed things. '''Modes''' are dependently existing things like mathematical and moral ideas, which form the content of religion, politics, and culture. Note that while Locke does not believe that we are born with ideas, he believes we are born with faculties to receive and manipulate them. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]] Locke rejected Descartes contention that thinking was an inherent property of the mind. He wrote that "To ask, at what time a Man has first any ideas, is to ask, when he begins to perceive; having ideas, and perception being the same thing. I know it is an opinion, that the soul always thinks, and that it has the actual perception of ideas in itself constantly, as long as it exists; and that actual thinking is as inseparable from the soul, as actual extension is from the body; which if true, to enquire after the beginning of a man's ideas, is the same, as to enquire after the beginning of his soul". [[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]]

As a corpuscularist, Locke begins took all observable bodies to be composed of invisibly small material particles called corpuscles. Such particles interacted primarily by direct physical contact, which could convey motion. Locke however, did accept Issac Newton's concept of gravitation, believing this attraction at a distance to be a special property added to matter by God. [[CiteRef:: Kochiras (2014)]] Material bodies had certain '''Essay Concerning Human Understandingprimary qualities''' by setting up reasonsincluding size, shape, texture, as well as responsesand motion, which were impossible to why he believes there are no innate notions separate from them. They also had '''secondary qualities''', which were the object's abilities to produce sensations of color, sound, taste, and smell in human beings when they interact with bodies or principles of particles with the speculative appropriate primary qualities. [[CiteRef::Kochiras (descriptive2014) or practical (moral]] Unlike Descartes, prescriptive) kindsLocke allowed that it was possible that the soul might be material. Locke treats innateness—the theory In book IV of his Essay, he wrote that there are innate notions—as a hypothesis and proceeds "anyone who will allow himself to provide arguments think freely...will hardly find reason directing him firmly for or against itthe soul's materiality". He argued that the materiality of the soul was consistent with "the great ends of religion and morality", since God might effect the material resurrection of the dead on Judgment Day. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis Locke (20162015b)|p. 15205]] He first rejects the argument from universal consent:

"Nothing is === Locke on Scientific Methodology ===The Aristotelian scholastic approach to knowledge saw scientific knowledge as certain knowledge of necessary truths, with conclusions deduced from premises that were self-evident. Like many others of his times, Locke did not believe that this sort of knowledge was generally possible in natural philosophy, though he continued to hold it as an ideal. He sought to replace such stringent demands with ones more commonly taken for granted than compatible with the new experimental science, such as that certain principles … are accepted practiced by all mankindthe Royal Society. Some people have argued that because these principles are … universally acceptedHe took knowledge to be "nothing but the perception of the connection and agreement, or disagreement and incompatibility, they must have been stamped into the souls of men any of our ideas", with our ideas derived ultimately from the outsetsensations." [[CiteRef::Locke (2015a2015d)|p. 3196]][[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)]] Locke distinguished between two sorts of knowledge, knowledge of '''nominal essences''' which are the set of observable qualities we use to classify a thing, and knowledge of '''real essences''' which are the causal grounds of a substance's perceivable qualities. It was this latter sort of knowledge that Locke thought was, for the most part, beyond human reach.[[CiteRef::Osler (1970)]]

identifying For Locke, knowledge of the real essences of material substances and the necessary connections of these essences to qualities flowing from them was the deepest sort of knowledge one might, in principle, have in natural philosophy. He imagined this to be knowledge of the corpuscles that make up matter and their sizes, shapes, and arrangements. Given such fundamental knowledge, we could deduce the defect wherein tertiary qualities of substances; their powers to produce certain effects in other substances. Just as a locksmith knows that universal agreement does a particular key opens one lock but not entail innatenessanother, as well as the fact we could know that opium produces sleep, and hemlock causes death and the argument from universal consent can be turned into evidence for a lack of innatenessreasons why.[[CiteRef::Locke (2015d)|p.212]][[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)]]

But Locke states supposed that speculative principles cannot be innate simply such knowledge was, for the most part, beyond human faculties because ‘children and idiots’ corpuscles are not aware of themtoo small to be discerned by human senses. He considers it a contradiction wrote that there would "But while we lack senses acute enough to discover the minute particles of bodies and to give us ideas of their fine structure, we must be certain truths imprinted content to be ignorant of their properties and ways of operation, being assured only of what we can learn from a few experiments. And what we can learn for sure in a person that said person could not understandway is limited indeed." [[CiteRef::Locke (2015d)|p. He regards ‘imprinting’ as ‘perception212]][[CiteRef::Anstey (2011)|pp.’ He entertains 31-45]] In making this case about the limits of our knowledge of a response corpuscular world, Locke nonetheless felt confident in relying on the corpuscular hypothesis itself "because that’s the theory that innate propositions could be capable is thought to go furthest in intelligibly explaining those qualities of bodies; and I fear that the human understanding hasn’t the power to replace it..." [[CiteRef::Locke (2015d)|p. 208]] While knowledge of being perceived under certain circumstancesreal essences, and until those circumstances occurredwas, for the propositions would remain unperceived. Howevermost part, inaccessible to humans, Locke responds imagined that this account fails it was not inaccessible to distinguish between innate propositions other epistemic agents with different or more acute senses, such as God, the angels, and any the inhabitants of other propositions that a person may come to knowplanets. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis Kochiras (2014)]][[CiteRef::Locke (20162015d)|p. 16211]]

Locke also considers supposed that human knowledge was limited to what he called '''sensitive knowledge'''; knowledge of nominal essences that comes every day within the account notice of our senses. [[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)]][[CiteRef::Osler (1970)]] Like Francis Bacon, he maintained that people "know and assent to these truths when they come to an important part of the methodology of natural philosophy is the use construction of reasonnatural histories giving systematic accounts of phenomena. Hypotheses played only a minor role in natural philosophy," though he did accept the value of the theories expressed in Newton's ''Principia''. [[CiteRef::Locke Anstey (2015a2011)|p. 570]] He wrote that "We should not take up any one [hypothesis] ''too hastily'' ... till we have very well examined particulars and made several experiments in that this is sufficient thing we would explain by our hypothesis, and see whether it will agree to prove those truths innatethem all". He considers two version of the phrase, “use of reason” and argues how both are incorrect[[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)|p. Firstly231]] Like Newton, he takes it to mean supposed that people use reason to discover innate propositions. He argues against knowledge could be obtained by showing how this definition fails to distinguish between mathematical theorems observation, experiment, and axioms, where axioms are supposed inductive generalization. Locke’s ''Essay'' came to be innateconsidered the start of '''British empiricism''', with contributions by subsequent Anglophone thinkers including Berkeley, Hume, Mill, Russell and theorems notAyer.[[CiteRef::Chappell (Ed.) (1994)|p. 261]]|Criticism=In some quarters, Locke’s ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' was heavily criticized. HoweverGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) responded, point-by-point, if both axioms and theorems are to be discovered by reasonLocke’s work in a book length rebuttal, ''New Essays on Human Understanding'', which he finished in 1704, then but wasn't published until sixty years later. [[CiteRef::Look (2017)]] Leibniz rejected Locke's claim that the senses were the ultimate source of all our ideas and that there were no innate ideas. He wrote that "Experience is no way to separate necessary...if the twosoul.. Second, he takes “use .is to take heed of reason” to mean the ideas that people come to understand innate propositions once they are able within us. But how could experience and the senses provide the ideas? Does the soul have windows? Is it similar to use reasonwriting tablets or wax? Clearly, without using reason to understand those innate propositions. Locke says who take thisview of the soul are treating it as fundamentally corporeal", too, is incorrecta possibility that Locke was willing to countenance, as “we observe ever so many instances of the use of reason in children long before they have any knowledge of [innate propositions]but Leibniz found abhorrent.” [[CiteRef::Locke Look (2015a2017)|p. 540]]

In additionLeibniz rejected Locke's claim that the mind was initially devoid of ideas, like a blank sheet of paper, even if because this interpretation would make new minds identical, but separate, a possibility ruled out by his Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles.[[CiteRef::Look (2017)]] Although he allowed that contingent truths might be learned with the assistance of the senses, logically necessary principles, like the truths of pure mathematics, logic, and some areas of “use metaphysics and ethics could not come from the senses because no number of specific experiences could demonstrate their necessity. [[CiteRef::Look (2017)]] Therefore, he concluded that, "the proof of them can only come from inner principles, which are described as innate". [[CiteRef::Leibniz (2017a)|p. 3]] To explain why everyone doesn't have access to these innate ideas, he wrote that "It would indeed be wrong to think that we can easily read these eternal laws of reasonin the soul...without effort or inquiry; but it is enough that they can be discovered inside us if we give them our attention: the senses provide the prompt,” were trueand the results of experiments also serve to corroborate reason, rather as checking procedures in arithmetic help us to avoid errors of calculation in long chains of reasoning". [[CiteRef::Leibniz (2017a)|p. 3]] Leibniz's criticisms of Locke says it still would not entail touched off a prolonged debate between empiricists, who maintained, with Locke, that all knowledge derives from experience, and rationalists like Leibniz, who maintained that said propositions were some knowledge is derived by means other than experience, and must therefore be innate.[[CiteRef::Markie (2015)]]

Regarding practical George Berkeley (moral, prescriptive) innate propositions, there are additional arguments Locke makes against innateness. First, practical propositions are not self1685-evident like speculative propositions—one could question why practical propositions could hold, and receive a response. This, says Locke makes them even less likely to be innate. Moreover, because practical propositions can be broken by someone, somewhere—and because obedience to them can be worn down by exposure to customs and education—they cannot be innate. Locke states that innate principles prevent inquiry and exempted lazy people from the efforts of further research. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (20161753)|p. 18]] ==== questioned Locke on Sensation and Reflection ==== In Book Two of Descartes''Essay'', Locke discusses how it is that people come to have knowledge, and from whence their ideas originate. He holds that the mind is a blank sheet conception of paper, and it comes to be written on through experience, and people’s understandings derive from their observations.[[CiteRef::Locke (2015b)|p. 18]] Experience, according to Locke, comes from sensation and reflection. '''Sensation''' is when a person’s senses are applied to specific perceptible objects, where the senses convey an object’s qualities into the mindcorpuscular mechanistic material world. [[CiteRef::Drawing on Locke (2015b)|p. 18]] '''Reflection''' occurs when a person is able to perceive the operations of their own s distinction between mind from within their own mind, in a way that produces ideas which could not come from external objects. Reflection is when the mind is aware of what it is doing. [[CiteRef::Locke (2015b)|p. 18]] While Locke holds that the mind is a blank slate regarding content, he believes that people are born with faculties with which to manipulate said content. Through sensation and reflection, the mind can, first, organize simple ideas into complex ideas—the independent existences of substances and the -dependent existences of modes. The mind can also combine simple and complex ideas and regard them together without uniting the two—what Locke calls relations. Furthermore, the mind can produce general ideas by extracting particulars in order to limit the application of that idea. Sensation and reflection can also give rise to other ideas like: numbers, space, time, power and moral relations. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)|p. 19]] ==== Locke on Primary and Secondary Qualities ==== Also in Book Two, Locke also distinguishes between two kinds of secondary qualities that objects or substances can have. “Whatever the mind perceives in itself—whatever the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding—I call an idea; and the power to produce an idea in our mind I call a quality if the thing that has that power.” [[CiteRef::Locke (2015b)|p. 28]] The first kind of qualities an object may have are -independent primary qualities. These are qualities that are impossible to separate from the object, no matter how finely one divides it. Locke gathers that these '''he questioned whether primary qualities''' are how people can observe the simple ideas such as occupying space (extension)size, having shape, being in motion or at rest, and having texture. The second types of qualities an object may have are called '''secondary qualities'''; these, according to Locke, are objects’ abilities to produce in people sensations that occur through people’s interactions with the objects’ primary qualities. These sensations consist of: color, sound, taste and smell.  Locke also discerns a third kind of quality: tertiary qualities, which is defined as object or substance’s power to affect another objectmotion were, like fire melting wax.[[CiteRef::Locke (2015b)]] He maintains that objects produce ideas in the minds of people through physical impact upon themindeed, through small particles—corpuscles—that travel from the object to the mind of the person-independent.[[CiteRef::Locke (2015b)|p. 29]] === Locke's Scientific Knowledge === The Aristotelian conception of scientific knowledge prevailed prior to Locke’s work stated that scientific knowledge concerned certain knowledge of necessary truths. Locke, upon realization that this demand of scientific knowledge was too strict for Denying the experimental science existence of his timematerial substance, developed a new conception that was more appropriate, while retaining Berkeley attributed intersubjective agreement about the Aristotelian scientific knowledge as an ideal.[[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)|p. 4]] According to Locke, there are two kinds of scientific knowledge, perceived world and they differ in their degree of certainty. Intuition is knowledge understood instantly, and demonstration is knowledge understood after a set of intermediate steps. Both intuition and demonstration are forms of certain knowledge.[[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)|p. 8]] Locke’s conception of scientific knowledge concerned certain kinds of objects: real essences and the connections that flowed between them. Locke drew a distinction between real and nominal essences. While '''nominal essences''' consisted in the observable qualities used its apparent stability to describe and organize a thing, the '''real essence''' is what makes the thing what it is.[[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)|p. 9]] To Locke, people have scientific knowledge action of a thing if they know both its real essence and the necessary connections between the real essence and other qualities.[[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)|p. 10]] This also holds for scientific knowledge in natural philosophy. However, says Locke, accessing either is impossible for people, due God rather than to the fact that real essences escape them. Later, Locke saw that this conception, too, was strict, so he relaxed his condition that knowledge must be absolutely certain, and held that although genuine knowledge was absolutely certain, lack properties of certainty did not entail ignorance. When knowing truth via intuition or demonstration is not possible, people can still judge it true or falseinvisible material corpuscles.[[CiteRef::Osler Downing (1970)|p. 15]] === Locke's Influence === Locke’s ''Essay'' posited an argument for rejecting the older, scholastic model of knowledge and science in favor of his empirical one, and it was very successful.[[CiteRef::Uzgalis (20162013)|p. 77]] Although Locke’s ''Essay'' contained much of Cartesian thought, Locke’s work was seen as refutation of Descartes, and moved philosophy toward that.[[CiteRef::Chappelle Berkeley (19941957)|p. 261]] Locke’s arguments against innate ideas was part of his support of the importance of “free and autonomous inquiry”. Locke’s ultimate goal was to show his readers that they could be  "free from the burden of tradition and authority, both in theology and knowledge, by showing that the entire grounds of our right conduct in the world can be secured by the experience [they] may gain by the innate faculties and powers [they] are born with."[[CiteRef::Chappelle (1994)|p. 252]] Locke’s Berkeley''Essay'' was also considered the start s criticism of British empiricism, which became the preferred mode of philosophy among future Anglophone corpuscular matter had a strong influence on subsequent thinkers such as Berkeley, including David Hume, Mill, Russell and Ayer.[[CiteRef::Chappelle (1994)|p. 261]]|Criticism=Locke’s ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' was heavily criticized. Gottfried Leibniz responded, point1711-by-point, to Locke’s work in his rebuttal, ''New Essays on Human Understanding'', where he disagreed with Locke’s rejection of innate ideas. Leibniz writes that there is no way all our ideas could come from experience since there are no real causal interactions between substances. In addition, Locke’s claim that the mind was a blank paper at birth violated Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles.[[CiteRef::Cook (20131776)]] Fellow empiricist George Berkeley was also critical of Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities—Berkeley claimed that primary qualities as well as secondary qualities were a product of the human mind, and not a part of the object.[[CiteRef::Berkeley Immanuel Kant (19571724-1804)]].|Page Status=Needs EditingEditor Approved