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Arts, Education, History, Philosophy

The philosophy of John Locke

A STUDY & INSIGHT

John Locke

JOHN LOCKE was a seventeenth-century English philosopher, famous for developing the Lockean social contract. This includes ideas surrounding the “state of nature” (the theoretical state of society that preceded government), “government with the consent of the governed”, and the natural rights of life, liberty, and estate. Locke was also the first to fully develop the idea of the tabula rasa (the theory that we are born with a “blank slate” mind which is formed by experience and perception).

. See also The philosophy of Kant

Locke was, arguably, the first English empiricist and therefore the creator of a philosophy that was seen at the time as being quintessentially English. He was a great political thinker and his ideas on governance greatly influenced the creators of the American constitution. There was a thread of secularism running throughout his work, though he found a place for God within his thinking, making him, in effect, a deist (a belief in god but not in divine revelation).

Empiricists broadly believe that knowledge can be acquired only through experience, primarily sensory experience, and that this experience is processed (reasoned) via the brain. The “tabula rasa” referred to the blank state of the mind before it has received any sensory input from which to construct knowledge of the world. This was distinct from the contemporary beliefs of rationalists such as Descartes whose famous statement, Cogito, ergo sum (I think therefore I am), is an example of a conclusion reached a priori – in other words it is a deductive belief, knowable without any experience in the matter.

An empiricist might say that we construct our view of reality through forming simple assumptions, from which we can create more complex ideas. For example, the simple idea of “yellow” comes from experiencing yellow again and again. Once one has also experienced the ideas of a “circle” and “heat”, one might combine the three to form the more complex idea of the sun. A rationalist, however, might believe that we are hardwired to “know” yellow – and heat and form – and that we can reason the idea of the sun without having experienced it.

Put simply, John Locke’s epistemology (philosophy of knowledge) was a precursor to the nature/nurture dichotomy that still causes debate today. From sofa arguments about children “getting that behaviour from you” to social debates about the causes of homosexuality and the nature of women’s role in society – all are, in part, indebted to Locke’s rejection of Descartes’ rationalism and his secularisation of the process of the acquirement of knowledge.

 

HE was also deemed a “probable-ist”. Suggesting that nothing was absolute, nothing was certain, and we can only infer and refine through logical deduction, Hobbes believed that all evidence points to probable connections and helps lead us to probable beliefs only. This in essence is the English methodology and, via its popularity throughout the intellectual circles in which Locke mixed, it helped to codify the scientific method that is still used today; namely, that knowledge is gained through measured experience and refined through repetition.

As with much philosophical thought and doctrine this can all seem semantically confusing. One might best exemplify empiricism by references to where it has been used allegorically or metaphorically. For example, the novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe has been styled as the first (great) empirical prose work and can certainly be read through the prism of empiricism. The island itself where Crusoe is stranded could be interpreted as a physical metaphor, but the analogy is strongest when referring to the hero’s initial lack of understanding or comprehension of his predicament (tabula rasa). Crusoe then begins to refer in his narration to “discovering”, “feeling”, “finding” and “seeing” things, and subsequently to “understanding” new experiences. Eventually he forms an idea of how the island works and his place in it and, using his new knowledge, he creates more complex constructs such as “huts”, “materials” and “contraptions”, exploring how he might survive there. Eventually he comes to dominate and own the place. Whether or not one gives credence to this interpretation, it is fair to say that Robinson Crusoe – though ostensibly a simple adventure yarn – was one of the first English-language novels to come at the time of the development of empiricism and the scientific method. It is possible that Defoe was unconsciously channelling these ideas even if he wasn’t doing so explicitly.

 

LOCKE was born in Wrington, Somerset and educated at Oxford, where he seemed destined for a career in medicine. In 1666 he met Anthony Ashley Cooper, later the First Earl of Shaftesbury, who became his friend and patron. Locke supervised a major operation to remove a hydatid cyst from Shaftesbury’s liver in 1668; the wits of the time found it very amusing that Shaftesbury’s liver needed a silver tap for the rest of his life. From 1675 to 1679 Locke lived in France, where he studied the work of Descartes, among others. Shaftesbury, who had been much engaged with parliamentary opposition to the house of Stuart, fled to Holland in 1681. Locke followed in 1683, returning to England after the accession of William of Orange in 1688. Over the course of the next twelve months Locke’s major philosophical works, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and the Two Treatises of Civil Government, as well as the Letter Concerning Toleration, were published, the latter two anonymously. Locke’s final years saw the publication of Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695). He was given minor administrative functions by the government – and, lived out his life quietly at the house of Damaris, Lady Masham, in Essex.

Although he is famous as the senior figure of British empiricism, Locke’s philosophy is more complex than this suggests. He rejected any place for “innate ideas” in the foundations of knowledge, and, is, in that sense anti-rationalistic. This view puts experience, or ideas of sensation and reflection, firmly at the basis of human understanding. However, Locke allowed the idea that some of our knowledge of objects gained from measurable aspects of physical reality, such as number, shape and so on, do give us an adequate representation of the world around us. These are an object’s primary qualities, as distinct from its secondary qualities, which are more subjective – such as its colour, smell or taste. But the power to know things derives from the all-knowing God, and “we more certainly know that there is a god than that there is anything else without us”.

 

ALTHOUGH Locke is thought of as the first great English philosopher of the scientific revolution, he became ally and “under-labourer” for Boyle and Newton. He himself was doubtful whether such natural philosophy could ever aspire to the condition of a science. By this he meant an activity capable of yielding rational and adequate insight into the real essences of things, yet also yielding us god-like. The task of scientific epistemology is to display what we do know, the various sources of knowledge, the proper employment, and above all the limits and doubtful capacities of our minds. It is through this theme that Locke connected his epistemology with the defence of religious toleration. This radical doctrine, together with his work on property and on the relationship between government and consent, is his enduring legacy to political philosophy.

Locke’s greatness lies in his close attention to the actual phenomena of mental life, but his philosophy is in fact balanced precariously between the radical empiricism of followers such as Berkeley and Hume and the theological world of reliance on faith that underpinned the message of Christianity. His views that religion and morality should be as open to the demands of demonstration and proof as mathematics stamps him as a key Enlightenment figure, even as his insistence on the primacy of ideas opened the way to more radical departures from that climate.

Footnotes:

Allegorical – Story with an underlying message as well as the literal one.

Empiricism – Doctrine that all knowledge derives from experience.

Epistemology – Study of the source, nature and limitations of knowledge.

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Arts, Education, History, Science

Quantum Leaps: Hipparchus

C. 170–125 BC

HIPPARCHUS spent long periods taking measurements of the earth’s position in relation to the stars. The results enabled him to make several important findings and calculations.

. The Precession of The Equinoxes

He discovered what is now known as the “precession of the equinoxes” by comparing his own observations with those noted by Timocharis of Alexandria a century and a half previously together with earlier recordings from Babylonia. What Hipparchus soon realised was that by taking into account any observational errors made by his predecessors, the points at which the equinox (the two occasions during the year when day and night are of equal length) occurred seemed to move slowly but consistently from east to west against the backdrop of the fixed stars. He gave a value for the annual precession of around 46 seconds of the arc, which is exceptionally close to the modern figure of 50.26 seconds, given the tools and data then available to him.

. The Distance of The Moon

From these observations, Hipparchus was able to make much more accurate calculations on the length of the year, producing a figure that was accurate to within six and a half minutes.

He was also able to correctly determine the lengths of the seasons and offer more exact predictions of when eclipses would take place.

He made observations of the sun’s supposed orbit and attempted to do likewise with the more irregular orbit of the moon. Although partially successful, he could not make entirely accurate calculations.

Using measurements and timings related to the earth’s shadow during eclipses, other attempts were made to determine the size of the sun and moon and their distances from the earth. Again, while not entirely accurate, Hipparchus proposed that the distance of the moon from the earth was 240,000 miles. This is remarkably close to the modern figure.

. A Catalogue of Stars

Perhaps Hipparchus’ most important astronomical achievement was his plotting of the first known catalogue of the stars, despite warnings from some of his contemporaries that he was thus guilty of impiety. He was inspired to begin this work in 134 BC after allegedly seeing a “new star” which prompted his speculation that the stars were not fixed as had previously been thought.

He went on to record the position of 850 stars in the remaining years of his life, a significant achievement given the resources available to him. What is more, he devised a scale for recording a star’s magnitude or brightness: from the most visible (the first magnitude) to the faintest (the sixth). Though amended considerably, it is a scale still used today.

. Developing Trigonometry

Because of the accelerated developments Hipparchus was making in astronomy, he was required to break new ground in other disciplines, particularly mathematics, to facilitate his celestial observations and calculations. Most notably of all, he developed an early version of trigonometry. With no notion of sine available to him, he constructed a table of chords which calculated the relationship between the length of a line joining two points on a circle and the corresponding angle at the centre.

. Further Influence of Hipparchus

Although Hipparchus is considered to be one of the most influential astronomers of the ancient world, it is arguable that his most impacting achievements lay in the areas of mathematics and geography.

The geographer and astronomer Ptolemy cited Hipparchus as his most important predecessor, and he is most often revered for his astronomical measurements and cataloguing. Yet, as the attributed inventor of trigonometry, as well as being the first person to plot places on the earth’s surface using longitude and latitude, his influence has been long lasting and widespread.

He was able to apply his work on the trigonometry of spheres to the planet from which he made his observations. Significantly, he was the first person to use longitude and latitude in his mathematical calculations to position where places were on the earth’s surface. Like so many of Hipparchus’s achievements, it is his further pioneering work that still resonates today.

Hipparchus was born in Nicaea, Bithynia, now in modern Turkey, where he undertook some of his astronomical observations, along with sustained periods in Rhodes and to a lesser extent in Alexandria.

Most of the detail of Hipparchus’s life that has come down to us is taken from Ptolemy’s record of his achievements (because the vast majority of Hipparchus’s original work has been lost).

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Arts, Education, History

(Short Essay) The Agricultural Revolution

1730

ALONGSIDE the Industrial Revolution came a revolution in agriculture. When agriculture first began, selected grass seeds were sown so that gradually improved varieties with larger ears were produced; in this way wheat and barley were developed from grasses. In the same way livestock rearing used selection. The principle of selection and selective breeding was long established. It was only in the eighteenth century that they became scientific in approach, and then development became rapid. The first step in this new agricultural revolution was the invention of a seed drill by Jethro Tull in 1701. This simple device, which pioneered sowing in rows and facilitated weeding, was improved eighty years later by the addition of gears to ensure the even distribution of seed.

Charles Townshend resigned from the British government in May 1730, at the age of 56, to begin a new career as an agricultural improver. Townshend, who became known as “Turnip” Townshend, observed the progress that the Dutch farmers were making by using scientific methods, and applied what he learnt on his own estates. He found that he could keep livestock through the winter by feeding them on turnips. By reserving a field or two for growing turnips as a fodder crop, he eliminated the need to slaughter most of his flocks and herds each autumn. The animals could be kept alive through the winter and slaughtered as and when there was a demand. This development meant that for the first time within the British Isles fresh meat became available all the year round. It also reduced the need to use expensive spices to disguise the taste of rotting meat, improved the safety of food, and allowed the cattle to grow bigger. By 1732 the average bullock sold at Smithfield cattle market in London weighed 550 pounds, compared with 370 pounds in 1710. There were many gains from just one change in practice.

Selective breeding by Leicestershire farmer Robert Bakewell led to the creation of a new breed of sheep, the Leicester, in 1755. Five years later Bakewell started experimenting with selective breeding of beef cattle, and by 1770 he had produced animals with deeper, wider bodies on shorter legs, animals that carried much more meat. He worked on the simple idea that “like produces like”, each year only breeding from the most suitable stock.

Crop rotation was developed in a more scientific way, to ensure that each farm produced the maximum amount of food. This intensification of agriculture led to a marked increase in food production in Britain and other European countries following similar paths. By 1770, the UK was producing a surplus of potatoes for the first time. The potato had until that time been grown exclusively as a subsistence crop; now there was a surplus that was available for sale at markets and in shops.

In 1772 Thomas Coke started a programme of selective animal husbandry that would result in the creation of Devon Cattle, Suffolk pigs and Southdown sheep. By 1780 the agrarian revolution was well under way, with higher quality seed in general use, more scientific crop rotation (pioneered by Jethro Tull in 1720), more efficiently designed tools and generally increased productivity. Thomas Jefferson wrote rather apologetically in his Notes on Virginia about the extensive nature of agriculture in America at that time. “The indifferent state of agriculture among us does not proceed from a want of knowledge merely. It is from our having such quantities of land to waste as we please. In Europe the object is to make the most of their land, labour being abundant; here it is to make the most of our labour, land being abundant.”

In other words, it was the pressure of a high population density that produced the revolution, the intensification of agriculture in Europe. But the need to produce more food throughout the world would eventually come, as population levels rose.

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