If there is one species of Australian fauna which is regularly mentioned by philosophers it is the black swan. What better way to teach about the fallibility of inductive inferences than to contrast ‘All ravens are black’with ‘All swans are white’? It is fascinating, therefore, to find that long before the official discovery of Australia, there was a reference to black swans in John Locke’s correspondence. On 19/29 September 1698 Jean-Baptiste du Bos wrote to Locke of ‘the discoveries of the Dutch of black swans which they found in an inlet which flows inland’(Correspondence, VI, p. 480). 1

This is the first, albeit tenuous, connection between Locke and Australia, a connection which in the last few decades has become far more robust. Locke’s philosophy is now widely taught across the country and a small but vigorous group of philosophers and scholars has been making its presence felt in Locke scholarship. It was fitting, therefore, that in July 2001 a symposium be held at the University of Sydney to discuss new work on the philosophy of John Locke. The collection of chapters that constitutes this book represents the fruit of that symposium. All but one of the contributions, that of James Hill and JR Milton, were delivered at the Sydney meeting and it is a pleasure now to have them in print.