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...

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...

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...