Open AccessPeter Anstey on Locke's Natural Philosophy
Author(s) -
Jonathan Walmsley
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
locke studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2561-925X
pISSN - 1476-0290
DOI - 10.5206/ls.2016.657
Subject(s) - interpretation (philosophy) , natural philosophy , epistemology , natural (archaeology) , philosophy , scope (computer science) , construct (python library) , natural law , classics , natural history , history , medicine , computer science , linguistics , archaeology , programming language
Peter Anstey’s book John Locke on Natural Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) (henceforth JLNP), presented an interpretation of Locke’s work on science and medicine, and how this shaped his philosophical views. It was wide-ranging in scope and often impressively detailed. It raised a number of questions about Locke’s relationship to the work of J. B. van Helmont, his collaboration with Thomas Sydenham, and the overall chronology and trajectory of his natural philosophical interests. It also occasioned a number of questions about methodology in the history of philosophy and how we should construct an interpretation of a thinker like Locke from the published, manuscript and historical records available. Some of these questions were posed explicitly in a ‘Review Article’ in these pages.