Locke: Philosophy of Science

This chapter brings some much-needed conceptual clarity to the debate about Locke’s scientific methodology. Instead of having to choose between the method of hypothesis and that of natural history (as most interpreters have thought), he would resist prescribing a single method for natural sciences in general. Following Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle, Locke separates medicine and natural philosophy (physics), so that they call for completely different methods. While a natural philosopher relies on “speculative” (causal-theoretical) hypotheses together with natural-history making to (...) explicate phenomena, a medical practitioner must prioritize collecting data about what remedies tend to cure what diseases over hypothesizing about the causes of the latter. (shrink)

A number of commentators have recently suggested that there is a puzzle surrounding Locke’s acceptance of Newton’s Principia. On their view, Locke understood natural history as the primary methodology for natural philosophy and this commitment was at odds with an embrace of mathematical physics. This article considers various attempts to address this puzzle and finds them wanting. It then proposes a more synoptic view of Locke’s attitude towards natural philosophy. Features of Locke’s biography show that he was deeply interested in (...) mathematical physics long before the publication of the Principia. This interest was in line with important developments in the Royal Society. It is argued that Locke endorsed a two-stage approach to natural philosophy which was consistent with an embrace of both natural history and mathematical physics. The Principia can be understood as consistent with this approach. (shrink)

Locke had a lifelong love of travel literature. He was also a proponent of the construction of natural histories. Many commentators have noted that there is a close link between these two interests. They suggest that data gleaned from travel literature was used in the construction of natural histories. This paper uses Locke’s reading of François Pyrard’s Voyage to argue that the relationship between the two genres was closer than has been realized. Specifically, it is argued that Pyrard’s discussion of (...) the coconut displays characteristic features of a natural history. It pays careful attention to first-hand experience. It emphasizes empirical observation and eschews theory and speculation. It focuses on the practical utility of the coconut. And it records a number of specific measurements. These features allowed Locke to read this portion of a piece of travel literature as a piece of natural history. This allows us to recognize that the genres of natural history and travel literature were not distinct for early modern thinkers. They overlapped in significant ways. (shrink)

John Locke's comments on experimental natural philosophy can plausibly be seen as a part of the physico-theological project of certain Christian virtuosi of the Royal Society to show that the workings of nature reveal the existence of a providential God. As I make clear, Locke thinks that God providentially designs us with limited epistemic capacities in order to check our pride and to motivate us to seek perfection in God. Locke maintains that a true science of nature is possible, but (...) he is pessimistic about the prospects of realizing such a science, given our epistemic limitations. I argue that this seeming tension can be resolved by appreciating that the horizon for obtaining this science is eschatological. In other words, Locke thinks that we will have a true science of nature in a state of perfection, as God transforms the probable knowledge we have of bodies into certain and comprehensive knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that Locke is a substance dualist in the general sense, in that he holds that there are, independent of our classificatory schema, two distinct kinds of substances: wholly material ones and wholly immaterial ones. On Locke’s view, the difference between the two lies in whether they are solid or not, thereby differentiating him from Descartes. My way of establishing Locke as a general substance dualist is to be as minimally committal as possible at the (...) outset, especially with respect to the classic debates on Locke’s positions in this domain, including those concerning substrata, real essences, and the like. Nonetheless, I show that minimal commitments about Locke’s primary/secondary quality distinction are sufficient to derive some substantive conclusions about his positions on these issues, as well as that he is a general substance dualist. (shrink)

Locke’s argument for God’s immateriality in _Essay_ IV x is usually interpreted as involving a principle that in some way prohibits the causation of thought by matter. I reject these causal readings in favor of one that involves a principle which says a thinking being cannot be composed out of unthinking parts. This Composition Principle, as I call it, is crucial to understanding how Locke’s theistic argument can succeed in the face of his skepticism about the substance of matter and (...) the cause of thought, as well as his belief in the possibility of thinking matter. It also explains why Locke held the soul’s immateriality to be highly probable. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze the virtual debate between Locke and Leibniz on solidity as proposed in Leibniz’s chapter on solidity in his New Essays on Human Understanding. I first track the oddities of the dialogue presented in the New Essays’ chapter on solidity. In this virtual dialogue, Leibniz’s representative often digresses and sometimes overlooks or misrepresents some of Locke’s most important insights. I then argue that these oddities reflect Leibniz’s sentiment that a productive controversy on this issue cannot be (...) conducted due to his substantial differences with Locke regarding solidity and the nature of matter. These differences are at most indirectly implied in passing in Leibniz’s chapter on solidity and to see them one has to consider other texts presenting Leibniz’s theory of matter. (shrink)

The overarching theme of Locke’s Image of the World, by Michael Jacovides, is that Locke’s belief in the best science of his day shapes his philosophy in important ways. Jacovides contends that “by understanding the scientific background to Locke’s thoughts, we can better understand his work” (1), including both his positions and his arguments for those positions. To a lesser extent, Jacovides’s book also treats Locke as a case study in thinking about how much scientific theory should influence philosophy. While (...) much of the science Locke relies on is incomplete or problematic, and so leads him into errors, Jacovides is sympathetic to Locke’s approach of using the best scientific theories to help develop and justify his philosophical positions. Throughout the book Jacovides shows how science – Locke’s study of medicine, and later Boyle’s corpuscularianism, and then later Newton’s physics – influence Locke’s thinking on a variety of topics. The result is an impressive account of the history of science at a critical point in its development through the lens of one of the great philosophers of that time. (shrink)

It is often claimed that classification, on Locke’s view, proceeds by attending to similarities between things, and it is widely argued that nothing about the sensible similarities between things determines how we are to sort them, in which case sorting substances at the phenomenal level must be arbitrary. However, acquaintance with the “internal” or hidden qualities of substances might yet reveal objective boundaries. Citing what I refer to as the Watch passage in Locke’s Essay (henceforth Watches), many commentators claim that (...) classification at the microphysical level must also be arbitrary. They conclude that sorting is arbitrary at any level of description. I refer to this as the standard reading of Locke on classification. In this paper I argue that Locke does not claim that sorting is arbitrary, either at the phenomenal level, or at the microphysical level. First, Locke does not claim in Watches that sorting is arbitrary at the microphysical level. The existence or nonexistence of objective boundaries at the microphysical level is not Watches’ topic and the passage is in fact silent on that question. Here, the standard reading mistakes a claim about the nature of the task of locating “specific differences” for a claim about the nature of the task of classification. This diagnosis proves instructive, for I argue that a similar conflation underwrites the standard reading’s claim that sorting at the phenomenal level must be arbitrary. Far from arbitrarily choosing how to sort things in terms of their phenomenal similarities, Locke thought that the mind simply follows nature’s lead. This characterization of the mind’s activity, I go on to argue, accords well with Locke’s claim that species are the workmanship of the understanding. (shrink)

Michael Jacovides provides an engaging account of how the scientific revolution influenced one of the foremost figures of early modern philosophy, John Locke. By placing Locke's thought in its scientific, religious, and anti-scholastic contexts, Jacovides explains not only what Locke believes but also why he believes it.

Locke is often interpreted as having attempted to build a foundation for knowledge based on ideas. However, textual evidence shows that the corpuscular philosophy is also a fundamental part of that foundation. Somewhat anachronistically, but also very usefully, Locke can be described as inferring corpuscularianism by an inference to the best explanation. Locke felt justified in believing that the corpuscular philosophy was the correct description of the world because it provided us with a better explanation of a wider variety of (...) phenomena than competing hypotheses.Keywords: John Locke; Robert Boyle; Induction; Inference to the best explanation; Corpuscular philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper expounds and critically assesses G. W. Leibniz’s mature theory of the cohesion of material bodies. Leibniz’s later view of cohesion was forged in polemical engagement with the views of John Locke and the Dutch natural philosopher Nicolaas Hartsoeker and it is in Leibniz’s response to Locke in his New Essays on Human Understanding, and especially his correspondence with Hartsoeker, that the theory is revealed. After setting out Locke’s theory of solidity and cohesion, the paper examines Leibniz’s response to (...) Locke in the New Essays. It then proceeds to the mechanical theory of conspiring motions developed in the Hartsoeker correspondence. The final section of the paper poses three problems for Leibniz’s theory – explanatory, empirical, and conceptual. (shrink)

This study presents a substantial and often radical reinterpretation of some of the central themes of Locke's thought. Professor Alexander concentrates on the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and aims to restore that to its proper historical context. In Part I he gives a clear exposition of some of the scientific theories of Robert Boyle, which, he argues, heavily influenced Locke in employing similar concepts and terminology. Against this background, he goes on in Part II to provide an account of Locke's (...) views on the external world and our knowledge of it. He shows those views to be more consistent and plausible than is generally allowed, demonstrating how they make sense and enable scientific explanations of nature. In examining the views of Locke and Boyle together, the book throws light both on the development of philosophy and the beginnings of modern science, and in particular it makes a considerable and original contribution to our understanding of Locke's philosophy. (shrink)

Both Immanuel Kant and Paul Guyer have raised important concerns about the limitations of Lockean thought. Following Guyer, I will focus my attention on questions about the proper ambitions and likely achievements of inquiry into the natural/physical world. I will argue that there are at least two important respects, not discussed by Guyer, in which Locke’s account of natural philosophy is much more flexible and accommodating than may be immediately apparent. On my interpretation, however, one crucial source of a too-limited (...) vision of natural philosophy remains in Locke, where he is appropriately criticized by both Kant and Guyer. My method will be to begin with a distinction that Locke draws in the very first draft of the Essay, between what he calls “the sensible object” and, on the other hand, “the uncertain philosophical cause.” I believe that Locke’s notion of “sensible object,” as opposed to uncertain philosophical cause, retains a central place in his thought in the published Essay, despite the fact thateven though this contrast is never made explicitly there. Tracing the evolution of these two concepts in his thought will allow us to track and better understand his developing views about the relation between the project of the. (shrink)

In his Nouveaux Essais, Leibniz places Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding in the Gassendist tradition. Modern philosophical historians have, however, largely disregarded Leibniz' claim. In this dissertation, I examine the evolution of Locke's theory of the material world, and argue that its final form in his Essay is correctly interpreted only if one takes seriously Locke's indebtedness to Pierre Gassendi. ;An examination of the early Drafts A and B of Locke's Essay places his theory of the material world squarely in (...) the Cartesian tradition. Yet, by the first edition of the Essay , Locke has explicitly rejected this Cartesianism, and accepted an amended Gassendist theory. An examination of Locke's writings during 1675-85 reveals that his thought was profoundly influenced by certain of the philosophers he met in France - especially, Francois Bernier, the author of the popular Abrege de la Philosophie de Mr. Gassendi, and Pierre Sylvain Regis, a Cartesian fallibilist. ;Locke rejected the Cartesian physics because of its incompatibility with his empiricist epistemology. His search for a theory of the material world which was consistent with his theory of knowledge led him to the Gassendist physics found in Bernier's Abrege. Locke's Journals of the years 1675-79 provide ample evidence motivating this shift from a Cartesian to a Gassendist physics. But even more powerful evidence is provided by an unpublished manuscript of Locke's, his Draft C of the Essay , parts of which are transcribed in the appendix to this dissertation. ;Locke completed his theory of the material world in Draft C. He amends the orthodox Gassendist theory so as to make it compatible with his epistemology. These amendments to Gassendis physics leave Locke with a theory of the material world bifurcated between epistemological and ontological concerns. ;Finally, I examine Locke's theory of the material world as it is presented in his Essay, a theory which is drawn almost verbatim from Draft C. Through textual comparisons between the Essay and Bernier's Abrege, the scope of the Gassendist influence on Locke's theory of the material world is demonstrated. (shrink)

My topic is the materialist appropriation of empiricism – as conveyed in the ‘minimal credo’ nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu (which interestingly is not just a phrase repeated from Hobbes and Locke to Diderot, but is also a medical phrase, used by Harvey, Mandeville and others). That is, canonical empiricists like Locke go out of their way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall (...) not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (Essay, I.i.2, in Locke 1975; which Kant gets exactly wrong in his reading of Locke, in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere, contrary to a prevalent reading of Locke, that the Essay is not the extension to the study of the mind of the methods of natural philosophy; that he is actually not the “underlabourer” of Newton and Boyle he claims politely to be in the Epistle to the Reader (Wolfe and Salter 2009, Wolfe 2010). Rather, Locke says quite directly if we pay heed to such passages, “Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct” (Essay, I.i.6). There would be more to say here about what this implies for our understanding of empiricism (see Norton 1981 and Gaukroger 2005), but instead I shall focus on a different aspect of this episode: how a non-naturalistic claim which falls under what we now call epistemology (a claim about the senses as the source of knowledge) becomes an ontology – materialism. That is, how an empiricist claim could shift from being about the sources of knowledge to being about the nature of reality (and/or the mind, in which case it needs, as David Hartley saw and Denis Diderot proclaimed more overtly, an account of the relation between mental processes and the brain). (David Armstrong, for one, denied that there could be an identification between empiricism and materialism on this point: eighteenth-century history of science seems to prove him wrong: see Armstrong 1968 and 1978.) Put differently, I want to examine the shift from the logic of ideas in the seventeenth century (Locke) to an eighteenth-century focus on what kind of ‘world’ the senses give us (Condillac), to an assertion that there is only one substance in the universe (Diderot, giving a materialist cast to Spinozism), and that we need an account of the material substrate of mental life. This is neither a ‘scientific empiricism’ nor a linear developmental process from philosophical empiricism to natural science, but something else again: the unpredictable emergence of an ontology on empiricist grounds. (shrink)

John Locke’s theory of classification is a subject that has long received scholarly attention. Little notice has been taken, however, of the problems that were posed for taxonomy by its inability to account for organic processes. Classification, designed originally as an exercise in logic, becomes complicated once it turns to organic life and the aims of taxonomy become entangled with processes of generation, variation, and inheritance. Locke’s experience with organisms—experience garnered through his work in botany and medicine—suggested to him both (...) the dynamism of nature and the artificiality of any a priori system of classification. This reinforced Locke’s critique of classification in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and by tracing its influence it is possible to approach Locke’s nominalism from a fresh perspective. (shrink)

This is a review of Peter Anstey's John Locke and Natural Philosophy.

It has been said that Robert Boyle gave in the century of The Scientific Revolution the “fullest expression” of the view that laws of nature are continually impressed by God (“occasionalism”). So regarded, the universe is anything but an autonomous machine, its ordered operation depending on God’s continuous imposition of lawful, patterned relations between phenomena and his continuous provision of motion for them to actually enter relations. The present paper contests this treatment of Boyle. Evidence is elicited to show that, (...) for Boyle, most physical relations issue from intrinsic dispositions of phenomena, not divine impositions, dispositions determined by corpuscular textures. Members of classes of phenomena have capacities to make specific changes which members of other classes have capacities to receive, these correlative capacities being necessarily connected, subjects in principle of a priori synthetic necessary knowledge. The same view is found in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It is additionally argued that Boyle’s God, the quintessentially active being, imparted motion at the creation, whereafter the motion of (at least most) natural phenomena has derived from natural, not supernatural, impulsion. (shrink)

Although we never made time to talk it out thoroughly, Margaret Wilson and I shared an interest in, and enthusiasm for, the tenth chapter in Locke’s Essay IV, entitled ‘Of Our Knowledge of the Existence of a GOD.’ In the present paper, written in sad tribute to her work and her person, I shall expound that deep, subtle, intricate, flawed chapter. While I shall evaluate its arguments as I go, I chiefly aim just to make clear what happens in those (...) nineteen sections, which I shall refer to by their numbers alone. They aim to show that ‘we are capable of knowing . . . that there is a GOD’ by cogently inferring this from secure premises. A god is any being that is ‘eternal, most powerful, and most knowing;’ given such a being, Locke adds laconically, ‘it matters not’ whether we call it God. This line of argument will be my topic in sections B through E. Two subsidiary themes in the chapter concern matter. One is this: given that there is a god, is it (or he) material or immaterial? Although he argues at length for God’s immateriality, Locke remarks in 13 that this in itself is of little moment. Someone with an otherwise correct theology is in good shape even if he wrongly thinks God to be made of matter - except, Locke adds, for a risk that he runs. Philosophers who are ‘devoted to matter,’ if they think God to be material, will comfortably conclude that everything is matter and will then ‘let slide out of their minds’ their theology, i.e. their view that the material world includes ‘an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being.’ Section 13 also argues that if the materialists do thus drift into atheism, ‘they destroy their own [materialist] hypothesis.’ This is too clever by half; it is neither well done nor instructive, and I shall not expound it. Some of the Chapter’s richest treasures concern God’s immateriality.. (shrink)

In the fourth book of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke hints that he could explain how God may have created matter ex nihilo, but refrains from doing so. Leibniz, when he came upon this passage, pricked up his ears. There ensued a sequence of personal events which are not without charm and piquancy, and a sequence of philosophical events which are of some interest. In this paper we tell the tale.

Robert Boyle showed that air “has a Spring that enables it to sustain or resist a pressure” and also it has “an active Spring . . . as when it distends a flaccid or breaks a full-blown Bladder in our exhausted receiver” (Boyle 1999, 6.41-42).1 In this respect, he distinguished between air and other fluids, since liquids such as water are “not sensibly compressible by an ordinary force” (ibid., 5.264). He explained the air’s tendency to resist and to expand by (...) hypothesizing the Air near the Earth to be such a heap of little Bodies, lying one upon another, as may be resembled to a Fleece of Wooll. For this (to omit other likenesses betwixt them) consists of many slender and flexible hairs; each of which, may indeed, like a little Spring, be easily bent or rouled up; but will also, like a Spring, be still endeavouring to stretch it self out again (Boyle 1999, 1.165). (shrink)

Seth Pringle-Pattison (233n1) observed that Locke “teaches a twofold mystery—in the first place, of the essence (‘for the powers or qualities that are observable by us are not the real essence of that substance, but depend upon it or flow from it’), and in the second place, of the substance itself (‘Besides, a man has no idea of substance in general, nor knows what substance is in itself.’ Bk. II.31.13).” In this paper, I’ll explain the relation between the two mysteries. (...) Our Rosetta Stone is Locke’s argument that we understand body and spirit equally well since we are ignorant of their underlying substances but we “have distinct clear Ideas of two primary Qualities, or Properties” (2.23.30) of each. I’ll show that he is working with a restricted notion of primary quality in this passage, but one that demonstrably falls under the kind defined in his chapter on primary and secondary qualities. According to Locke, the fundamental primary qualities of bodies flow from corporeal substances and the determinations of these fundamental qualities constitute real essences. Locke’s discussion can’t be understood without understanding the relevant scholastic background. In the first half of my paper, I’ll explain his argument as an idiosyncratic application of doctrines he learned and taught at Oxford. In the second half, I’ll use lessons from my interpretation of the argument to explain the relation that Locke believes obtains between a substance and its fundamental primary qualities, and then I’ll build upon that explanation to elucidate his general account (insofar as he has a general account) of the inherence of qualities in corporeal substances. (shrink)

In a well-known paper, Reginald Jackson expresses a sentiment not uncommon among readers of Locke: “Among the merits of Locke’s Essay…not even the friendliest critic would number consistency.”2 This unflattering opinion of Locke is reiterated by Maurice Mandelbaum: “Under no circumstances can [Locke] be counted among the clearest and most consistent of philosophers.”3 The now familiar story is that there are innumerable inconsistencies and internal problems contained in Locke’s Essay. In fact, it is probably safe to say that there is (...) not another canonical, well-respected, and seminal philosopher whose work is so widely thought to be swarming with inconsistencies. I, however, do not think that the common, unflattering view of Locke is accurate as a general view of the Essay. But despite my wishes to the contrary, I do believe that Locke’s chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ (2.27)4 leads to (at least) one intractable problem, a problem that is the subject of this paper. (shrink)

Hobbes on morality and the modern science of motion -- Freedom as the realization of desire -- Leviathan : the making of a mortal God -- John Locke : underlaborer of the new sciences -- Locke on the freedom of the human spirit -- From Berkeley to Hume : the radicalization of empiricism -- Hume's science of the dynamics of the passions -- Adam Smith deciphers the invisible hand of the market -- Contradictions of economic life -- I think : (...) Descartes' foundation of modern science -- God and the good society -- Leibniz's discovery of universal freedom -- The best of all possible worlds -- Justifying God's ways : Kant's progress from Leibniz through Pope to Rousseau -- Rousseau's reasoning of the heart. (shrink)

In this paper I look at two connections between natural philosophy and theology in the late 17th century. In the last quarter of the century there was an interesting development of an argument, earlier but sketchier versions of which can be found in classical philosophers and in Descartes. The manoeuvre in question goes like this: first, prove that there must, necessarily, be a being which is, in some sense of "greater", greater than humans. Second, sketch a proof that such a (...) being is necessary. Move from the fact that there must be at least one such being to the conclusion that there is precisely one such being. Raise the question: could this necessary being be matter, the entire material universe, or must it be God? Produce an argument from natural philosophy to show that matter cannot be the required necessary being. Either explicitly or implicitly run the obvious disjunctive syllogism and conclude with a few remarks about the foolishness of atheism. The argument, which has classical roots, found a number of 17th-century exponents. Cudworth provided the most important version, and Locke, Bentley and Clarke adapted Cudworth's version with varying success. The argument touches on natural philosophy in two ways. First, the basis of the argument invites consideration of a problem in the philosophy of science - the relation between micro properties and macro properties - which was seen clearly enough in some contexts but which was overlooked in others, particularly when the theological aspect was uppermost. The second point of contact involves a direct application of a scientific result - the existence of a vacuum - to the theological issue. (shrink)