display all the ideas for this combination of texts
6 ideas
| 12550 | If we knew the minute mechanics of hemlock, we could predict that it kills men [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Did we know the mechanical affections of the particles of rhubarb, hemlock, opium and a man, ...we should be able to tell beforehand that rhubarb will purge, hemlock kill, and opium make a man sleep. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.25) | |
| A reaction: Locke was adamant that we could never know such things, but I take it that we now do know them, and that this is precisely what science aims at. I'm beginning to think that the entire aim of science is to predict nature. |
| 15966 | Boyle and Locke believed corpuscular structures necessitate their powers of interaction [Locke, by Alexander,P] |
| Full Idea: Both Boyle and Locke believe in necessary connections in nature; full knowledge of a corpuscular structure would enable us to deduce, without trial, particular powers of interaction. | |
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 03.3 | |
| A reaction: I take this view to be correct. Is the necessity analytic, because that is how you define the 'structures'? If not, what is the basis for the claim? |
| 15984 | The corpuscular hypothesis is the best explanation of the necessary connection and co-existence of powers [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Human understanding is scarce able to substitute better than the corpuscularian hypothesis in an explication of the qualities of bodies, which will afford us a fuller and clearer discovery of the necessary connection and co-existence of the powers. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.16) | |
| A reaction: [considerably reworded] Locke is committed to natural necessities, in a way entirely rejected by Hume. The picture given in this remark perfectly embodies scientific essentialism, though elsewhere Locke is more cautious. |
| 15950 | We will only understand substance when we know the necessary connections between powers and qualities [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Which ever hypothesis be clearest and truest, ...our knowledge concerning corporeal substances, will be very little advanced.. , till we are made see, what qualities and powers of bodies have a necessary connection or repugnancy one with another. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.16) | |
| A reaction: A part from the emphasis on powers, this sounds a bit like Armstrong's account, that laws are the necessary connections between properties. It is scientific essentialism because Locke expects researchers to discover this stuff. |
| 7713 | We identify substances by supposing that groups of sensations arise from an essence [Locke] |
| Full Idea: We come to have the ideas of particular sorts of substance, by collecting such combinations of simple ideas as are by observation of men's senses taken notice of to exist together, and are supposed to flow from the unknown essence of that substance. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.03) | |
| A reaction: Locke is notoriously somewhat ambiguous and unclear about some of his views, but this remark seems to make him the father of modern scientific essentialism. Note that this is an empiricist happily referring to an unperceived best explanation. |
| 12545 | Other spirits may exceed us in knowledge, by knowing the inward constitution of things [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Other spirits, who see and know the nature and inward constitution of things, how much must they exceed us in knowledge? | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.06) | |
| A reaction: I take it that Locke was describing his own posterity, without realising it. It seems to me that modern physics has reached a place which Locke firmly pronounced impossible for human beings, and it has revealed many 'inward constitutions'. |