Berkeley
As man progressed through the various stages of evolution, it is assumed that at
a certain point he began to ponder the world around him. Of course, these first
attempts fell short of being scholarly, probably consisting of a few grunts and
snorts at best. As time passed on, though, these ideas persisted and were
eventually tackled by the more intellectual, so-called philosophers. Thus,
excavation of "the external world" began. As the authoritarinism of the ancients
gave way to the more liberal views of the modernists, two main positions
concerning epistemology and the nature of the world arose. The first view was
exemplified by the empiricists, who stated that all knowledge comes from the
senses. In opposition, the rationalists maintained that knowledge comes purely
from deduction, and that this knowledge is processed by certain innate schema in
the mind. Those that belonged to the empiricist school of thought developed
quite separate and distinct ideas concerning the......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 2357
Approximate Pages: 10 (260 words per double-spaced page) |