A Blupete Biography Page

Tabula Rasa & Empiricism, Part 4 to the Life & Works of
John Locke

Ultimately, in his acceptance of the existence of God, Locke was a dualist -- though only barely so; he did not consider man to be a divine creature fixed with ideas on coming into this world. Locke was an empiricist, viz., all knowledge comes to us through experience. "No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience." There is no such thing as innate ideas; there is no such thing as moral precepts9; we are born with an empty mind, with a soft tablet (tabula rasa) ready to be writ upon by experimental impressions. Beginning blank, the human mind acquires knowledge through the use of the five senses and a process of reflection. Not only has Locke's empiricism been a dominant tradition in British philosophy, but it has been a doctrine which with its method, experimental science, has brought on scientific discoveries ever since, scientific discoveries on which our modern world now depends.

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Peter Landry
2012 (2019)