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|SummaryBrief=John Locke was a British philosopher, writer and , 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 has also written 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 was heavily involved in religion and politics in the 17th century. His participation in the modern science resulted from born into an English Puritan family of modest means, but was able to obtain an excellent education by way of his close ties with Robert Boylefather's connections. Locke ascribed to Boyle’s Corpuscular Hypothesis[[CiteRef::Dunn (2003)]] In 1647, which stated that at the natural world was composed age of smallfifteen, he began studies at Westminster School, invisible pieces of matter called corpusclesconsidered London's best. At twenty, he began studies at Christ Church College, Oxford. The empiricism His studies focused on logic, metaphysics, and epistemology Locke presents in his most notable work, languages taught within the framework of '''Aristotelian scholasticism'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' is considered , for which he developed an intense dislike. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)| pp. 3-4]][[CiteRef::Milton (1994)]] This was more than a response to the two dominant schools of thought at that time: Aristoteliancentury after Nicholas Copernicus (1473-influenced Scholasticism—which 1543) had been dominant since the Medieval era—and Cartesian rationalismposited his '''heliocentric cosmology''' in 1543, which was challenging and forty years after Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) published his observations with the formertelescope in 1610. Locke wanted to find a middle groundThese developments had cast Aristotelianism into doubt.[[CiteRef::Westfall (1980)|Major Contributions==== p. 6]] Like many ambitious students of the time, Locke On Innate Principles ===Locke begins his sought alternative resources outside the formal curriculum, and such resources were abundant at Oxford. He became involved with a discussion group organized by John Wilkins (1614-1672)and was exposed to the '''experimental philosophy''' and the ideas of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) who argued for an '''inductive methodology'''Essayfor science. The Wilkins group was the nucleus of what would later become the 'Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge' by setting up reasons, known simply as well as responses, the '''Royal Society'''. The Royal Society became a formal institution in the 1660's and England's main society for the promotion of natural philosophy. The society would set itself in opposition to why he believes there are no innate notions or principles the Aristotelian scholasticism of the speculative universities, advocating the study of nature rather than of ancient texts. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (descriptive2016) or practical (moral, prescriptive) kinds|p. 4]] Locke treats innateness—the theory that there are innate notions—as 's notebooks indicate a sort strong interest in medicine and chemistry. He attended the lectures of hypothesis the great anatomist Thomas Willis (1621-1675) and proceeds to provide arguments against it took careful notes. [[CiteRef::Rogers (SEP, Locke1982)|p. He first rejects the argument from universal consent217]][[CiteRef::Anstey (2011)|p. 6]]

“Nothing is more commonly taken After Locke received his bachelor's degree in 1656, he remained at Oxford to study medicine. He worked closely with Dr. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), renown for granted than his pioneering work in the treatment of infectious diseases. [[CiteRef::Dunn (2003)]] Robert Boyle (1627-1691) succeeded John Wilkins as the leader of the scientific group at Oxford, and became Locke's scientific tutor. Boyle ascribed to the '''corpuscular mechanistic philosophy''' associated with [[Rene Descartes]] (1596-1650), and was noted for his physical experiments. The corpuscular philosophy held that certain principles … are accepted by all mankindthe visible properties of the natural world were due to interactions between invisibly small particles or corpuscles. Some people have argued that because these principles are … universally accepted Locke read Boyle's and Descartes works, as well as those of Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), they must have been stamped into who emphasized the souls role of men the senses in knowledge. He learned from his experimentalist associates and from the outsetwritings of Gassendi, to be skeptical of Descartes' '''rationalism'''.” [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]][[CiteRef::Dunn (2003)]][[CiteRef::Fisher (Essay 12014)]] 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.2.2[[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]]

identifying Locke became personal physician to Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-1683) (Lord Ashley), a 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 defect wherein that universal agreement does not entail innatenessmajor 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. Locke and Newton became directly acquainted while Locke was finishing this work. When Locke read Newton's ''Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'', published in 1687, he found epistemological views similar to his own. Both had absorbed the fact that views current in the argument Royal Society. Locke's essay received its warmest reception from universal consent the members of the society, and can be turned deemed an expression of their collective understanding of scientific methodology. [[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]]|Major Contributions==== Locke's Empiricism ===In the first book of his ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' Locke begins by arguing that there are no principles or ideas that are innate in the human mind. In seventeenth century England, such principles were widely held to exist and to be necessary to the stability of religion and morality. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]] "Nothing is more commonly taken for granted" he wrote, "than that certain principles both speculative and practical are accepted by all mankind. Some people have argued that because these principles are (they think) universally accepted, they must have been stamped into evidence for a lack the souls of men from the outset." [[CiteRef::Locke (2015a)|p. 3]] He denies that we hold such innate principles, including innate ideas of God, identity, or impossibility. This criticism was aimed widely, but was directed, in part, at Cartesians, who held, among other things, that we have an innate idea of innatenesssubstance. [[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]] Locke maintained that if there were such innate principles, they would be known to everyone, even "children, idiots, savages, and illiterate people", which was clearly not the case. [[CiteRef::Locke (2015a)|p. 8]] Mathematical truths likewise cannot be innate, as these must be discovered by reason.[[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]]

In the second book, Locke states that speculative principles cannot begins his positive account of how people acquire knowledge. "Let us suppose", he writes, "the mind to have no ideas in it, to be innate simply because “children and idiots” are not aware of themlike ''white paper'' with nothing written on it. He considers How then does it a contradiction that there would come to be certain truths imprinted written on?...To this I answer, in a person one word, from ''experience''". Locke's belief that said person could not understand—he regards ‘imprinting’ as ‘perceptionall knowledge comes from sense experience is '''empiricism'''.’ [[CiteRef::Locke (Essay 12015b)|p.218]] Unlike Descartes, Locke does not seriously entertain the possibility that his senses are fundamentally unreliable.5) He entertains a response writes that says , "We certainly find that innate propositions could be capable pleasure or pain follows upon the application to us of being perceived under certain circumstancesobjects 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 until 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 circumstances occurof 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 propositions would remain unperceivedcontent of religion, politics, and culture. HoweverNote 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 responds rejected Descartes contention that thinking was an inherent property of the mind. He wrote that this account fails "To ask, at what time a Man has first any ideas, is to ask, when he begins to distinguish between innate propositions 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 any other propositions 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 person may come man's ideas, is the same, as to know enquire after the beginning of his soul". [[CiteRef::Rogers (SEP, Locke1982). ]]

As a corpuscularist, Locke also considers the account that people “know and assent took all observable bodies to these truths when they come to the use be composed of reasoninvisibly small material particles called corpuscles. Such particles interacted primarily by direct physical contact,” (Essay 1which could convey motion.2Locke 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.6[[CiteRef:: Kochiras (2014) ]] Material bodies had certain '''primary qualities''' including size, shape, texture, and that this is sufficient motion, which were impossible to prove those truths innateseparate from them. He considers two version 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 particles with the phraseappropriate primary qualities. [[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)]] Unlike Descartes, “use Locke allowed that it was possible that the soul might be material. In book IV of reason” and argues how both are incorrect. Firstlyhis Essay, he takes it to mean wrote that people use reason "anyone who will allow himself to discover innate propositionsthink freely... He argues will hardly find reason directing him firmly for or against by showing how this definition fails to distinguish between mathematical theorems and axioms, where axioms are supposed to be innate, and theorems notthe soul's materiality". However, if both axioms He argued that the materiality of the soul was consistent with "the great ends of religion and theorems are to be discovered by reasonmorality", then there is no way to separate since God might effect the material resurrection of the two dead on Judgment Day. [[CiteRef::Locke (Essay 12015b)|p.2.10)205]]

Second=== Locke on Scientific Methodology ===The Aristotelian scholastic approach to knowledge saw scientific knowledge as certain knowledge of necessary truths, he takes “use with conclusions deduced from premises that were self-evident. Like many others of reason” to mean his times, Locke did not believe that people come to understand innate propositions once they are able to use reasonthis sort of knowledge was generally possible in natural philosophy, without using reason though he continued to understand those innate propositionshold it as an ideal. Locke says this, too, is incorrectHe sought to replace such stringent demands with ones more compatible with the new experimental science, such as “we observe ever so many instances that practiced by the Royal Society. He took knowledge to be "nothing but the perception of the use connection and agreement, or disagreement and incompatibility, of reason in children long before they have any knowledge of “innate propositions” our ideas", with our ideas derived ultimately from sensations. [[CiteRef::Locke (Essay 12015d)|p.2.12196]][[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. In addition, even if It was this interpretation latter sort of “use of reasonknowledge that Locke thought was,” were truefor the most part, Locke says it still would not entail that said propositions were innatebeyond human reach.[[CiteRef::Osler (1970)]]

Regarding practical (moralFor 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, prescriptive) innate propositionsin principle, there are additional arguments Locke makes against innatenesshave in natural philosophy. FirstHe imagined this to be knowledge of the corpuscles that make up matter and their sizes, practical propositions are not self-evident like speculative propositions—one could question why practical propositions could holdshapes, and receive a response (Essay 1.3.4)arrangements. ThisGiven such fundamental knowledge, says Locke, makes them even less likely we could deduce the tertiary qualities of substances; their powers to be innateproduce certain effects in other substances. MoreoverJust as a locksmith knows that a particular key opens one lock but not another, because practical propositions can be broken by someonewe could know that opium produces sleep, somewhere and hemlock causes death and the reasons why.[[CiteRef::Locke (Essay 12015d)|p.3.13)—and because obedience to them can be worn down by exposure to customs and education 212]][[CiteRef::Kochiras (Essay 1.3.202014)—they cannot be innate.]]

But Locke states supposed that innate principles prevent inquiry such knowledge was, for the most part, beyond human faculties because corpuscles are too small to be discerned by human senses. He wrote that "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 content to be ignorant of their properties and exempted lazy people ways of operation, being assured only of what we can learn from a few experiments. And what we can learn for sure in that way is limited indeed." [[CiteRef::Locke (2015d)|p. 212]][[CiteRef::Anstey (2011)|pp. 31-45]] In making this case about the limits of our knowledge of a corpuscular world, Locke nonetheless felt confident in relying on the corpuscular hypothesis itself "because that’s the efforts theory that is thought to go furthest in intelligibly explaining those qualities of further research bodies; and I fear that the human understanding hasn’t the power to replace it..." [[CiteRef::Locke (Essay 12015d)|p.4208]] While knowledge of real essences, was, for the most part, inaccessible to humans, Locke imagined that it was not inaccessible to other epistemic agents with different or more acute senses, such as God, the angels, and the inhabitants of other planets.24[[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)]][[CiteRef::Locke (2015d)|p. 211]]

=== Locke On Experience ==supposed that human knowledge was limited to what he called '''sensitive knowledge'''; knowledge of nominal essences that comes every day within the notice of our senses. [[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)]][[CiteRef::Osler (1970)]] Like Francis Bacon, he maintained that an important part of the methodology of natural philosophy is the construction of natural 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::Anstey (2011)|p. 70]] 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 thing we would explain by our hypothesis, and see whether it will agree to them all". [[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)|p. 231]] Like Newton, he supposed that knowledge could be obtained by observation, experiment, and inductive generalization. Locke’s ''Essay'' came to be considered the start of '''British empiricism''', with contributions by subsequent Anglophone thinkers including Berkeley, Hume, Mill, Russell and Ayer.[[CiteRef::Chappell (Ed.) (1994)|p. 261]]|Criticism=In Book Two of some quarters, Locke’s ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' was heavily criticized. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) responded, point-by-point, to Locke’s work in a book length rebuttal, ''New Essays on Human Understanding'', which he finished in 1704, but wasn't published until sixty years later. [[CiteRef::Look (2017)]] Leibniz rejected Locke discusses how it is 's claim that people come to have knowledge, the senses were the ultimate source of all our ideas and from whence their that there were no innate ideas originate. He holds wrote that "Experience is necessary...if the mind soul...is a blank sheet to take heed of paperthe ideas that are within us. But how could experience and the senses provide the ideas? Does the soul have windows? Is it similar to writing tablets or wax? Clearly, and those who take this view of the soul are treating it comes as fundamentally corporeal", a possibility that Locke was willing to be written on through experiencecountenance, and people’s understandings derive from their observations but Leibniz found abhorrent. [[CiteRef::Look (Essay 22017)|p.1.2)40]]

Experience, according to Leibniz rejected Locke's claim that the mind was initially devoid of ideas, comes from sensation and reflection. Sensation is when like a person’s senses are applied to specific perceptible objectsblank sheet of paper, because this would make new minds identical, but separate, where a possibility ruled out by his Principle of the senses convey an object’s qualities into the mindIdentity of Indiscernibles. [[CiteRef::Look (Essay 2.1.32017) Reflection occurs when a person is able to perceive ]] Although he allowed that contingent truths might be learned with the assistance of the senses, logically necessary principles, like the operations truths of their own mind pure mathematics, logic, and some areas of metaphysics and ethics could not come from within the senses because no number of specific experiences could demonstrate their own mindnecessity. [[CiteRef::Look (2017)]] Therefore, in a way he concluded that produces ideas which could not , "the proof of them can only come from external objectsinner 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 reason in the soul.. Reflection .without effort or inquiry; but it is when enough that they can be discovered inside us if we give them our attention: the senses provide the prompt, and the mind is aware 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 what it is doingreasoning". [[CiteRef::Leibniz (Essay 22017a)|p.13]] Leibniz's criticisms of Locke touched off a prolonged debate between empiricists, who maintained, with Locke, that all knowledge derives from experience, and rationalists like Leibniz, who maintained that some knowledge is derived by means other than experience, and must therefore be innate.4[[CiteRef::Markie (2015)]]

While George Berkeley (1685-1753) questioned 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 Descartes' conception of substances and the dependent existences of modesa corpuscular mechanistic material world. The mind can also combine simple and complex ideas and regard them together without uniting the two—what Drawing on Locke calls relations. Furthermore, the 's distinction between 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 (SEP, Locke). === Locke On Primary and Secondary Qualities ===Also in Book Two, Locke also distinguishes between two kinds of -dependent 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.” (Essay 2.8.8).  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 texture and motion or at restwere, indeed, and having texture (Essay 2mind-independent.8.9). The second types Denying the existence of qualities an object may have are called secondary qualities. Thesematerial substance, according to Locke, are objects’ abilities to produce in people sensations that occur through people’s interactions with Berkeley attributed intersubjective agreement about the objects’ primary qualities. These sensations consist of: color, sound, taste perceived world and smell (Essay 2.8.10). Locke also discerns a third kind of quality: tertiary qualities, which is defined as object or substance’s power its apparent stability to affect another object, like fire melting wax. He maintains that objects produce ideas in the minds action of people through physical impact upon them, through small particles that travel from the object God rather than to the mind properties of the person, a view that was common at the time invisible material corpuscles. [[CiteRef::Downing (Essay 2.8.122013).|Criticism=Locke’s ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' was heavily criticized. Gottfried Leibniz responded, point-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::Berkeley (SEP, Leibniz1957). Fellow empiricist George ]] Berkeley was also critical 's criticism of Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities—Berkeley claimed that primary qualities as well as secondary qualities were corpuscular matter had a product of the human mindstrong influence on subsequent thinkers, including David Hume (1711-1776) and not a part of the objectImmanuel Kant (1724-1804).|Page Status=Needs EditingEditor Approved