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Michael Jacovides provides an engaging account of how the scientific revolution influenced one of the foremost figures of early modern philosophy, John Locke. By placing Locke's thought in its scientific, religious, and anti-scholastic contexts, Jacovides explains not only what Locke believes but also why he believes it.
List of contents
- 1: Introductory
- 2: Hypotheses and Derivations
- 3: The Boundaries of Conceivability
- 4: Our Ignorance of Corporeal Substances
- 5: Primary Qualities
- 6: Matter, Mind, and God
- 7: The Visual Array
- 8: Resemblance and Cognition
- 9: Meaning and Secondary Qualities
- 10: Last Words
About the author
Michael Jacovides is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. He has published ten papers on various aspects of Locke's philosophy along with other papers, including Experiences as Complex Events, Hume's Vicious Regress, and How is Descartes' Argument Against Scepticism Better than Putnam's?.
Summary
Michael Jacovides provides an engaging account of how the scientific revolution influenced one of the foremost figures of early modern philosophy, John Locke. By placing Locke's thought in its scientific, religious, and anti-scholastic contexts, Jacovides explains not only what Locke believes but also why he believes it.
Additional text
Jacovides's book is more than an exercise in Kuhnian philosophy of science. He offers solutions to many well-known exegetical puzzles, including those about Locke's attitude toward the idea of substance, his claim that our minds are likely immaterial, his conception of ideas, and his assertion that some ideas resemble qualities in bodies ... Though this book draws on ten articles that Jacovides published over a decade and a half, it does not read like a collection of papers strung together. It is exceptionally well written, and supplies a coherent narrative from a consistent point of view. Jacovides is sympathetic without being uncritical; and whether defending Locke or criticizing him, he puts all of his cards on the table. This is a valuable addition to the literature on Locke, not least because Jacovides makes such an effort to see things as Locke might have seen them, and to get us to do that too.
