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Locke's Natural Philosophy in Draft A of the Essay
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 65, Number 1, January 2004
- pp. 15-37
- 10.1353/jhi.2004.0022
- Article
- Additional Information
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Locke wrote Draft A of the Essay while collaborating with physician Thomas Sydenham. Sydenham held that we are ignorant of nature's internal workings, cannot decide which natural philosophical theories are true and should therefore rely only upon experience. Draft A repeated Sydenham's views — we cannot understand nature's modus operandi and must rely on experience for our knowledge of the world. Equally, we must be agnostic about natural philosophical theories, mechanism included. Locke was not a mechanist in Draft A. Consequently, Locke's account of substance, first articulated in this Draft and repeated in the Essay, was completely independent of the mechanical philosophy.