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Hello, England's greatest contribution to philosophy is probably empiricism.

At the end of the 17th century, the philosopher John Locke wrote in his essay concerning

human understanding. All ideas come from sensation or reflection.

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters without any

ideas.

How comes it to be furnished? When comes it by that vast store which the

busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? When says

it all the materials of reason and knowledge? to this I answer in one word from experience.

It was a body of ideas that Voltaire and Ficant after him define the English attitude to thought,

a straight-talking pragmatic philosophy that was hand-in-glove

with a practical people.

How was the philosophy of empiricism developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, and what effect

did this emphasis on experience have on culture and

literature in Britain. With me to discuss English

Empiricism is Judith Hawley, senior lecture in English at Royal Holloway University

of London, Jonathan Ray, author and philosopher, and

Mary Pittock Professor of Scottish and Romantic Literature at the University of Manchester.

Judith Hawley, John Locks, the defining philosopher of empir imperialism, but the other two founding fathers

are Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton.

Can you set the intellectual context of their approach?

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