John Locke and a Rene Descartes Epitaph

John Locke and Modern Life

John Locke on Respiration

During the early part of his career as an academic in 1660s Oxford, John Locke trained as a physician. Acquainted with some of the most brilliant researchers of his day— Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, Richard Lower and Robert Hooke—and an active member of the scientific community, Locke was part of a generation that revolutionized natural philosophy. He never published a natural philosophical wor...

Descartes , Spinoza , and Locke on Extended Thinking Beings

Can we know that nothing is in itself both thinking and spatially extended?1 This was among the most central and divisive philosophical issues of the early modern period, one with obvious relevance not only to the theoretical understanding of mind and matter, but also to the practical prospects for immortality and, with it, divine sanctions for morality. While many important philosophers—includ...

John Locke on Respiration JONATHAN WALMSLEY

During the early part of his career as an academic in 1660s Oxford, John Locke trained as a physician. Acquainted with some of the most brilliant researchers of his day— Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, Richard Lower and Robert Hooke—and an active member of the scientific community, Locke was part of a generation that revolutionized natural philosophy. He never published a natural philosophical wor...

Chapter 15 John Locke : Theory of knowledge

In the previous chapter we have outlined some fundamental doctrines of Locke’s empiricism. We have examined his concepts of simple and complex ideas which are the archetypes of knowledge according to empiricist epistemology. The ideas of substances, modes and relations are the three types of complex ideas our mind forms by combining the simple ideas received from multiple sources. Before we pro...