John Locke
John Locke, (1632-1704). British philosopher. Medicine and experimental science were his early interests and he joined the Royal Society in 1668. In 1667 Lord Shaftesbury appointed Locke as his physician and their association lasted until Shaftesbury’s death in 1683. Locke’s major works are An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), which argued influentially that all human knowledge originates in sense impressions, and
“No one has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent. Locke aimed at credibility, and achieved it at the expense of consistency. Most of the great philosophers have done the opposite. Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (1945)” Two Treatises on Government (1690), a statement of Whig theory.
