Locke's Rejection of Hypotheses about Sub-Microscopic Events

Abstract

In this essay I shall try to establish the proposition that: unlike many scientists and philosophers of the seventeenth century, Locke did not believe that the employment of hypotheses about events would accelerate the acquisition of empirical In order to avoid certain easy misconstructions of this statement, I shall have to say a word or two about the meanings of the terms sub-microscopic and empirical knowledge. Roughly speaking, will be used as an abbreviation of the phrase so small as to be imperceptible by the most powerful known instruments. So far as terrestrial events are concerned, it is an antonym of observable, which will be used as an abbreviation of the phrase perceptible with some known instrument or with the naked eye. Thus, according to these rough definitions, the activities of molecules or atoms are examples of processes, whereas the activities of the protozoa in a drop of water or of football players on a playing field are examples of observable processes. By empirical I do not mean propositions about the world which are known with theoretical certainty. The term will be used to denote well-founded propositions which describe how kinds of observable objects behave under various circumstances. For example: After being in the presence of a loadstone, a piece of iron will acquire magnetic powers, Sound will not travel in a vacuum, Aqua fortis dissolves silver but not gold, cold regimen will recover a smallpox patient faster than a hot regimen. A piece of empirical knowledge is usually a recipe which tells us how to induce a certain property on some specified kind of thing. Empirical knowledge is not what Locke called Knowledge in the fourth book of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding; for in that place Knowledge referred only to propositions which are known with theoretical certainty. The argument for the proposition stated above will fall into two parts. Part I will contain an explanation of the manner in which hypotheses about events were expected, in the seventeenth century, to speed the acquisition of empirical In Part II it will be shown that there are good grounds for believing that Locke did not share this expectation.

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