No Innate Speculative Principles
Locke begins his book ‘An essay concerning human understanding’ by posing the question of innate ideas and his believed view of the fallacy behind such thinking, for as he states if; ‘a creature to whom God hath given sight, and a power to receive them by the eyes from external objects.’ Then it is not unreasonable to draw the conclusion that we are born with no innate knowledge or skill but that everything we have come to know is of past experience allowed through our God given senses such as the aforementioned ability of sight and of the other senses.
He goes on to subsequently argue that:
Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses: and it is hardly to be conceived that our infinitely wise Creator should make so admirable a faculty which comes nearest the excellency of his own incomprehensible being, to be so idly and uselessly employed, at least a fourth part of its time here, as to think constantly, without remembering any of those thoughts, without doing any good to itself or others, or being any way useful to any other part of the creation, If we will examine it, we shall not find, I suppose, the motion of dull and senseless matter, any where in the universe, made so little use of and so wholly thrown away.
Locke is essentially attempting to convey the point that God has given us brilliant faculties for which to obtain knowledge and so their employment invalidates the need for innate knowledge as we are able to acquire all we need to know from our senses.
He argues that our God-given powers of deductive reasoning allow us to produce real knowledge from our experiences.
This viewpoint is an interesting contrast to those expressed by the likes of say Descartes.
Descartes believes for example that God as an infinite being cannot be created by the mind of a finite being and thus the idea of God is an innate idea from God. Furthermore he believed the mind has a vast array of innate intellectual concepts ranging from mathematics to metaphysics.
Human understanding
Locke’s idea of State of Nature is that everyone should be able to enjoy natural freedom and equality whilst obeying natural laws. This is in direct opposition to the idea of a King’s divine right to rule. It is to an extent based off the Bible; ‘Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."I.e. the idea that man has dominion over all the earth and as such it should rule it equally. His opposition to divine right is also based in the historical context of the time of his writing which will be covered in more detail in subsequent paragraphs. In this state of Nature governed by the natural law of reason he argues that every man has a right to life, liberty and property as long as these rights to not clash with one another. He comes close to arguing for innate ideas through his view that morality is known intuitively by all however also argues we are simply a blank slate and our experiences are what shape us.
This view on state of Nature is in direct opposite to that of Hobbes in Leviathan whom some think Locke was responding to. Hobbes believed that the state of nature, a time before government to be a time when people are governed by their passions and to live in such a time is to live in a bloody and turbulent time with a constant state of war and strife. This will ultimately result in a leader, being appointed by the people to rule; this ruler will have all the power but will be expected to provide protection and ultimately peace.
Historical context is important when examining any figure in history or any aspect of history itself. John Locke lived in a time of political turmoil in Britain and his books conveyed what could be controversial ideas and propositions such as the right for revolution. For Locke proposed a concept of government that governed by the consent of the people limited by the law and if it were to lose these then the citizenry had the right to replace this government through revolution. As such he suggests the right to revolution is a right of man. Locke was a religious man and one of the many who expressed an anti-catholic sentiment of the time. The Exclusion Bill would prove a failed attempt to bar catholic kings or more specifically James, Duke of York from succession to the throne. Following this failure Locke would be accused of being a part of the Rye House Plot to assassinate both King Charles II and the heir to the throne James forcing him to flee to the Netherlands in 1683. In later years he would publish his works on his return to England following the overthrow of King James II.
Newton
Whilst Locke focused on the human mind and the ability to attain knowledge, Newton focused on understanding the world and universe at large. This would be shown in the book ‘Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica’ which translated to English means "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" also referred to simply as ‘Principia.’
It is often regarded as one of the most important publications in the history of science and was published in 1687 under the urging of his publisher Edmund Halley.
The book, whilst too complicated for most minds of the day was a mathematical demonstration of Copernican hypothesis proposed by Kepler. It also presented Newton’s laws of motion and a basis for further work into classical mechanics.
The book was important for the time as it served to convince people that the world was actually knowable but what’s more structured by unseen laws. It conveyed the message that there was order to the universe.
Whilst receiving criticism from the religious it should be known that Newton himself was a devout believer in God as was Locke and Newton simply summarised that he was attempting to understand the full magnitude and glory of God’s creation. However Newton could not appease all his critics. He would be attacked by the Cartesian school who believed in a physical universe. This is the seemingly logical idea that an item only moves when in contact with another object and thus Newton’s laws of motion and Kepler’s laws of planetary motion would only be seen as an attack on the very scientific principles they stood by.
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