Peach trees, gravity and God: Mechanism in Locke
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12 (3):387 – 412 (2004)
| Abstract | Locke claimed that God superadded various powers to matter, including motion, the perfections of peach trees and elephants, gravity, and that he could superadd thought. Various interpreters have discussed the question whether Locke's claims about superaddition are in tension with his commitment to mechanistic explanation. This literature assumes that for Locke mechanistic explanation involves deducibility. We argue that this is an inaccurate interpretation and that mechanistic explanation involves a different type of intelligibility for Locke. | |||||||||
| Keywords | superaddition corpuscularianism thinking matter | |||||||||
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