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John Locke’s epistemology John Locke was a 17th century empirical philosopher. In his work An Essay concerning Human Understanding, he set out to examine the sources of human knowledge, and to what degree of certainty these sources of knowledge were ultimately capable of achieving. Like Descartes before him, he was concerned about the validity of present human knowledge, but unlike Descartes, he did not seek absolute epistemological and metaphysical certainty. He was prepared to …

…into his own philosophy. His method of inquiry “the historical plain method” utilized plain common sense and was a humbling approach to old philosophical questions of knowledge. It is important to realize that he did not claim that his philosophy could discover all certainties, but that it could discover those things that were certainly beyond our comprehension. This balanced, empirical, no nonsense, analytical style of thought earned John Locke the title “father of modern empiricism.