What is Human Nature?: Traditional Greek View of Human Nature, The
Aristotle, Plato's student agreed with his teacher's analysis of human nature. But he took a broader view of how humans fit into nature as a whole. In Aristotle's view everything has its own unique purpose or telos. Biological and sensory purposes a...
Does All Knowledge Come from Experience?: John Locke's Empiricism and Its Troublesome Gap
John Locke and later empiricists dispute the rationalists' claim that pure reason could grasp truths about the world. They argue that all knowledge of the world must come through the senses and experience. Locke compares the mind at birth to a tabul...
Connections: World of Sensory Stimuli, A
As attuned as people think they are to the world, their senses take in only a fraction of the energy that surrounds them. Most animal species have many more than the five primary senses ascribed to humans. Many animals have polarized filters that al...
Does the Mind Shape the World?: Does the Mind Shape the World?
Immanuel Kant, born in 1724 sought to resolve a controversy that had been brewing for over a century. Rationalists argued that knowledge is based on reasoning inside our minds. Empirists disagreed saying that all knowledge must come from the senses....