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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)]] 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 (1994)|p. 261]]
|Criticism=In 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'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 necessary...if the soul...is to take heed of the 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, those who take this view of the soul are treating it as fundamentally corporeal", a possibility that Locke was willing to countenance, but Leibniz found abhorrent. [[CiteRef::Look (2017)|p. 40]]
Leibniz rejected Locke's claim that there are no innate ideas. The the mind, he supposed, could not be was initially devoid of ideas, like a blank sheet of paper, because this 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 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(1705a)|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...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, and 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(1705a)|p. 3]] 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. [[CiteRef::Markie (2017)]]
George Berkeley (1685-1753)
