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English Pages 186 [93] Year 1988
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OPLS A HISTOR) OF\\F"TFR\ Pllll ,OSOPfo : 5 THE EMPIRICISTS R. S. WOOLHOUSE ,.
'One of the great historic controversies in philosophy' was how Bertrand Russell described the ideological conflict between rationalists and empiricists - the conflict between reason and experience as sources of knowledge and ideas. Yet in this study of the empiricists R. S. Woolhouse is not so much concerned to justify these conventional labels as to set forth the dominant philosophical ideas and let those ideas speak for themselves. Setting the empiricist philosophers in their contemporary cultural context the author examines their various approaches to philosophy. He concentrates primarily on the major figures - Bacon, Hobbes, Loc)