THINGS OF A NATURAL KIND
In the Renaissance, ideas were understood to be universal. But in An Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1690, Locke argued that ideas are provisional and dependent upon experience.1 Countering the neo-Platonist and Cartesian traditions in which knowledge is acquired by the mind alone, empiricism emphasised that experience is key to understanding, which develops through an evolving dialogue between the environment, senses and mind. While Locke considered the natural world only so far as it affected human knowledge, Shaftesbury influenced a wider reverence.2 Increasingly, the natural world was associated with subjective experience. One became a means to explore the other, drawing attention to the conditions ...
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