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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 tertiary qualities of substances; their powers to produce certain effects in other substances. Just as a locksmith knows that a particular key opens one lock but not another, we could know that opium produces sleep, and hemlock causes death and the reasons why.[[CiteRef::Locke (2015d)|p. 212]][[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)]] But Locke supposed that 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 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 theory that 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 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. [[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)]][[CiteRef::Locke (2015d)|p. 211]]

Locke 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)]]  Locke believes that there are certain epistemic agents, such as God and the angelsLike Francis Bacon, that are capable of such knowledge, but that humans are not.  wledge prevailed prior to Locke’s work stated that scientific knowledge concerned certain knowledge of necessary truths. Locke, upon realization maintained that this demand an important part of scientific knowledge was too strict for the experimental science methodology of his time, developed a new conception that was more appropriate, while retaining natural philosophy is the Aristotelian scientific knowledge as an ideal.[[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)|p. 4]] According to Locke, there are two kinds construction of scientific knowledge, and they differ in their degree natural histories giving systematic accounts of certainty. Intuition is knowledge understood instantlyphenomena, and demonstration is knowledge understood after with hypotheses playing only a set of intermediate steps. Both intuition and demonstration are forms of certain knowledge.[[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)|p. 8]] Locke’s conception minor role, though he did accept the value 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 theories expressed in the observable qualities used to describe and organize a thing, the Newton's ''real essencePrincipia''' is what makes the thing what it is.[[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)|p. 9]] To Locke, people have scientific knowledge of a thing if they know both its real essence and the necessary connections between the real essence and other qualities.[[CiteRef::Kochiras Anstey (20142011)|p. 1070]] This also holds for scientific knowledge in natural philosophy. However, says Locke, accessing either is impossible for people, due to the fact He wrote 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 of certainty did "We should not entail ignorance. When knowing truth via intuition or demonstration is not possible, people can still judge it true or false.take up any one [[CiteRef::Osler (1970)|p. 15]hypothesis] === Locke's Influence === Locke’s 'too hastily'Essay'' posited an argument for rejecting the older, scholastic model of knowledge ... till we have very well examined particulars and science made several experiments in favor of his empirical onethat thing we would explain by our hypothesis, and see whether it was very successfulwill agree to them all".[[CiteRef::Uzgalis Rogers (20161982)|p. 77231]] Although Locke’s ''Essay'' contained much of Cartesian thoughtLike Newton, Locke’s work was seen as refutation of Descartes, and moved philosophy toward he supposed that.[[CiteRef::Chappell (1994)|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 knowledge could be  "free from the burden of tradition and authorityobtained by observation, both in theology and knowledgeexperiment, 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::Chappell (1994)|pinductive generalization. 252]] Locke’s ''Essay'' was also came to be considered the start of '''British empiricism''', which became the preferred mode of philosophy among future with contributions by subsequent Anglophone thinkers such as including Berkeley, Hume, Mill, Russell and Ayer.[[CiteRef::Chappell (1994)|p. 261]]