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 accept the fact that some knowledge or understanding was beyond human comprehension.

Locke begins his essay in Book 1 by arguing against the concept of innate ideas. Empiricists such as Locke claim that nothing can come a priori or prior to experience. Locke believed the mind at birth was like a tableau Rasa or blank slate, which experience can then make its mark.

In chapter one, of Book one, Locke tackles the most favorable argument for innate ideas, the evidence of "universal consent". This argument states that all cultures have common ideas concerning such things as fire, heat, and numbers. However, Locke counters this argument with "Universal consent proves nothing innate". Locke explains that these ideas are universal not because they are i

The rationalist philosopher Gottfried Leibniz challenged Locke's assertion that "there was nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses". He responded with "except the intellect itself". Locke asserts that the mind is a tableau Rasa, and nothing is imprinted on it before experience. However, there must be something there, because otherwise the sense experiences that are dropped on the blank sheet could never be analyzed. Locke does not take into consideration innate capacities as being something a priori in the mind.

Locke introduces the term quality to refer to the power of an object to produce ideas in our mind. Primary qualities are those that are objective properties of the object that are actually contained in the object itself, they include extension, motion, shape, solidity, and numbers.

John Locke's work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was said to usher in the Enlightenment. He was a huge proponent of the revolutionary new Newtonian physics, and incorporated these theories 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.

The second types of ideas are complex ideas. These ideas are formed by three different activities of the mind, compounding, relating, and abstracting.

nnate, but because they are common to all human experience. Locke also points out that it is evident that some children and mentally handicapped persons do not automatically have ideas naturally imprinted on them at birth.

It is important to realize that he did not claim that his philosophy could discover all certainties, but that

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