empiricism

Description
An account of knowledge that traces all knowledge of any substance back to sensory experience. Along with George Berkeley (1685–1753) and David Hume (1711–76), Locke is often referred to as one of the British empiricists. This commitment to empiricism is reflected in his famous claim that the mind at birth is like a tabula rasa – that is, like a ‘blank slate’ on which nothing is written. What Locke means by this is that there are no innate ideas. Instead, all our ideas, and thus our knowledge, are derived via experience of the world.

• Pritchard, 2026, What is this thing called knowledge, pg. 70