editor, Administrators
2,020
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
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 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 the visible properties of the natural world were due to interactions between invisibly small particles or corpuscles. Locke read Boyle's and Descartes works, as well as those of Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), who emphasized the role of the senses in knowledge. He learned from his experimentalist associates and from the writings of Gassendi, to be skeptical of Descartes' '''rationalism'''. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]][[CiteRef::Dunn (2003)]][[CiteRef::Fisher (2014)]] 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::Rogers (1982)]]
Locke became personal physician to Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-1683) (Lord Ashley), a leading 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. 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 views current in the Royal Society. [[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]] 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)]]
|Major Contributions==== Locke's Empiricism ===
