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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 and , political activist, medical researcher, Oxford academic, and government official. Among his most notable works is ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'', which provides a defense of empiricism and the origins of ideas and understanding. In this work, Locke rejects the idea of innate principles, and argues against their existence, offering his own methods as to how humans generate that all knowledgecomes 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 lived in politically turbulent times for England. Conflicts between the King and the Parliament and between Protestants, Anglicans, and Catholics led to civil war in the 1640's. King Charles I was defeated and killed. The monarchy was abolished in favor of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate in the 1650's. The protectorate collapsed and the monarchy was restored in 1660. In 1668, King James II was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution in favor of William of Orange and his wife Mary.  While studying at Oxford, Locke was exposed Scholasticism—the Aristotelian-influenced course of study at the time—and found that he did not like it and had no use for it. He left this course of study [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)|p. 4]] and picked up medicine and chemistry, where he became acquainted with Robert Boyle [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)|p. 5]] and ascribed to his Corpuscular Theory, which stated that the natural world was composed of small, invisible pieces of matter called corpuscles. To Locke, this was simpler and more appealing than Scholasticism. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)|p. 6]] While writing ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'', Locke traveled to France, where met Descartes, and was impressed by his anti-Scholasticism philosophy, Cartesian rationalism. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)|p. 5]] The empiricism Locke presents in ''Essay'', is considered to be a response to both Scholasticism and Cartesian rationalism, especially as a rejection of the latter.