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1. Throughout this section, I am indebted to the insightful discussionsof Margaret Osler, “John Locke and the Changing Ideal ofScientific Knowledge” (1970), and Peter Dear, Chapter 1,Discipline and Experience.

2. See also Osler on this point: “Implicit in his claim that wepossess scientific knowledge when ‘we know the cause on whichthe fact depends, as the cause of that fact and no other’ is thefurther claim that scientific knowledge comprises knowledge of theessential natures of things; for, without such knowledge, how could weknow the ultimate causes of the facts in question?” (Osler 1970,p.4)

3. On this point, see Dear’s discussion,Discipline andExperience, pp. 22–23:

True scientific knowledge should be demonstratively certain, whichrequired that its premises themselves be certain. Natural philosophy,however, as later scholastic writers often admitted, tended to fallshort of this idea because of the merely ‘probable’ statusof many of its experiential principles; it then represented‘dialectical’ rather than demonstrative reasoning.

4. On monstrous occurrences, see Dear,Discipline andExperience, pp. 18 and 20–21.

5. Dear discusses the variety of phenomena that could serve asexperience:

For Aristotle, the nature of experience depended on its embeddednessin the community; the world was construed through communal eyes.Experience provided phenomena, and phenomena were, literally,data, ‘givens’; they were statements about howthings behave in the world …. The sources of phenomena werediverse, including common opinion and the assertions of philosophersas well as personal sense perception. (Dear,Discipline andExperience, p. 23)

6. On Aristotle, see, for example, Robin Smith’s interpretation.Aristotle avoids the regress threatened by a demonstration’sexperience-based premises because he holds that “our minds arealready so constituted as to be able to recognize the right objects,just as our eyes are already so constituted as to be able to perceivethe colors that exist”; experience “actualizes therelevant potentialities in the soul” (see the entry onAristotle’s logic). For the conception of knowledge extending from Aristotle, see Osler1970. She identifies the following epistemological assumptionsgrounding the Aristotelian conception: “(1) that the worldcorresponds to our conceptions, and (2) that, consequently, it ispossible for us to know the real natures of essences of substancesexisting in the world” (Osler 1970, p. 3).

7. See Park and Daston, pp. 3–4 on this point: “The medievalLatinscientia, although cognate with the modern English‘science’, referred to any rigorous and certain body ofknowledge that could be organized (in precept though not always inpractice) in the form of syllogistic demonstrations from self-evidentpremises. Under this description, rational theology belonged toscientia—indeed, it was the ‘queen ofsciences’—because its premises were the highest and mostcertain. Excluded, however, were disciplines that studied empiricalparticulars, such as medical therapeutics, natural history andalchemy, because there can be no absolute certainty about particularphenomena” (Park and Daston, pp. 3–4).

8. On the use of experiments to reveal fundamental principles inconnection with demonstrations, see Wisan 1978; Jardine 1991, p. 110;Dear 1995, p. 22 and chapter 5. The extent and purposes ofGalileo’s experiments has become a focus of investigation andsome controversy. Recent discussions include Palmieri 1998; 2009; VanDyck 2005.

9. As Osler writes,

During the Renaissance and seventeenth century, the growth ofempirical investigation, especially in natural history, yieldedless-than-certain knowledge about the world, making it increasinglydifficult to assimilate natural philosophy into the Aristotelianapodictic model for science. (Osler 1998, p. 91).

10. Responding to an objection about the conflict of his law withobservations, Descartes writes:

It often happens that experience can seem initially to be incompatiblewith the rules which I have just explained, but the reason for this isobvious. For the rules presuppose that the two bodies B and C areperfectly hard and are so separated from all other bodies that thereis none other in their vicinity which could either help or hindertheir movement. And we see no such situation in this world. (AT IXB93, translated and discussed in Desmond Clarke,“Descartes’ philosophy of science”,CambridgeCompanion to Descartes, p. 269)

11. Mandelbaum writes

It was … characteristic of Descartes’ ideal of knowledge… [that] effects were to be explained through their causes,that is, properties through the substances which served as theirgrounds. However, Boyle reversed this order, and insisted thatknowledge proceed from effects to causes; knowledge for him was to beobservational and empirical, not rational. Locke wholly agreed withBoyle’s method. It was because he agreed with this method, andbecause he none the less adopted the stricter Cartesian definition of‘knowledge,’ that Locke refused to characterize ourinformation concerning material bodies as knowledge. (Mandelbaum 1964,p. 53)

12. A good discussion of this point may be found in Jolley 1999, Ch. 4(“The Philosophy of Matter”). It should be noted thatpeople might disagree at different times or places about which set ofqualities identifies any given kind; that is to say, the nominalessence, by which we classify particular things as belonging to anatural kind, might vary across times and communities. Thus, the setof intrinsic qualities from which any given nominal essence flowsshould be distinguished from the set of intrinsic qualitiesresponsible for all of the thing’s qualities. Lisa Downing(2007, Section 6) suggests, in concurrence with Paul Guyer, that weavoid confusion by ‘regimenting’ Locke’sterminology, using the term ‘real essence’ to refer to theformer, and ‘real constitution’ to refer to the latter.Although I have not adopted it, this is certainly a worthysuggestion.

13. The term ‘tertiary qualities’ has arisen in the secondaryliterature to refer to the qualities that Locke describes asfollows:

To these might be added a third sort which are allowed to be barelyPowers though they are as much real Qualities in the Subject, as thosewhich I to comply with the common way of speaking callQualities, but for distinctionsecondary Qualities.For the power in Fire to produce a new Colour, or consistency in Waxor Clay by its primary Qualities, is as much a quality in Fire, as thepower it has to produce in me a newIdea or Sensation ofwarmth or burning, which I felt not before, by the same primaryQualities,viz. The Bulk, Texture, and Motion of itsinsensible parts. (E II.viii.10, p. 135)

14. An in-depth examination of how justified Locke is, both in avoidingskepticism and in his position on sensitive knowledge, may be found inPriselac 2017.

15. The example is not Locke’s.

16. See Jolley, 2002, pp. 68–69.

17. Wilson has argued that “Locke’s views about the relationof thought and matter turn out ultimately to undercut the centralclaim that a body’s sensible qualities flow from the primaryqualities of insensible particles—and with it the notion thatsecondary qualities are explainable in terms of primary ones”(Wilson, 1999, p. 198).

18. A more detailed examination of those interpretations may be found inDuncan (2021).

19. Hill (2004, p. 627, 628) argues that the concept of superaddition“is quite out of place” in connection with cohesion,because Locke regards cohesion as a foundational problem, whichthwarts our efforts to conceive of body. Yet in the passage justquoted (E IV.iii.29, pp. 559–560), Locke does appear toattribute cohesion to God in the same way that he attributes sensationand impulse.

20. Locke writes:

Body as far as we can conceive being able only to strike and affectBody: and Motion, according to the utmost reach of ourIdeas,being able to produce nothing but Motion, so that when we allow it toproduce pleasure or pain, or theIdea of a Colour, or Sound,we are fain to quit our Reason, go beyond ourIdeas, andattribute it wholly to the good pleasure of our Maker. For since wemust allow he has annexed Effects to Motion, which we can no wayconceive Motion able to produce, what reason have to we conclude, thathe could not order them as well to be produced in a Subject we cannotconceive capable of them, as well as in a Subject we cannot conceivethe motion of Matter can any way operate upon? I say not this, thatwould any way lessen the belief of the Soul’s Immateriality: Iam not here speaking of Probability, but Knowledge. (E IV.iii.6, p.540–541)

21. On this point, see Mandelbaum, 1964, p. 22. See also Downing, 1998,p. 391.

22. See Stein, 1990, p. 32.

23. Locke writes:

Theprimary Ideaswe have peculiar to Body, ascontradistinguished to Spirit,are the cohesion of solid, andconsequently separableparts, and a power of communicating Motionby impulse. These, I think, are the originalIdeasproper and peculiar to Body: for Figure is but the consequence ofinfinite Extension. (E II.xxiii.17, p. 306)

24. Commentators interpreting superaddition in Locke along these linesinclude Wilson (1979, 1999); Langton (2000); Connolly (2015); andNuovo (2017, 2021).

25. ULC, Add. MS 1965, translated and discussed by Koyre, 1965, pp.271–272, quoted in and discussed by Rogers, p. 223; see alsoRogers p. 236.

26. See Mandelbaum, 1964, chapter 2; McGuire, “Atoms and theAnalogy of Nature”, pp. 77–89. The problem was originallytermed ‘transdiction’, as identified by Donald Williamsand discussed by Mandelbaum, 1964, chapter 2.

27.Principia, Book 3, p. 795.

28. The problem is discussed by Uzgalis in the entry onJohn Locke.

29. Newton 2004, p. 29. See also discussions by Stein (2002, pp.277–79); Gorham (2011); Kochiras (2021, the section on thereductive account of body).

30. See, for example, Cohen 2002, p. 61.

31. Against Woolhouse’s view, see Janiak, 2008, pp.120–122.

32. For an overview of the debate concerning Newton, see Kochiras (2011,Section 5).

33. See E IV.iii.6, p. 542:

Who, either on the one side, indulging too much to their Thoughtsimmersed altogether in Matter, can allow no existence to what is notmaterial: Or, who on the other side, finding notCognitionwithin the natural Powers of Matter, examined over and over again, bythe utmost Intention of Mind, have the confidence to conclude, thatOmnipotency it self, cannot give Perception and Thought to aSubstance, which has the Modification of Solidity. He that considershow hardly Sensation is, in our Thoughts, reconcilable to extendedMatter; or Existence to any thing that hath no Extension at all, willconfess, that he is very far from certainly knowing what his Soul is.‘Tis a Point, which seems to me, to be put out of the reach ofour Knowledge: And he who will give himself leave to consider freely,and look into the dark and intricate part of each Hypothesis, willscarce find his Reason able to determine him fixedly for, or against,the Soul’s Materiality. Since on which side soever he views it,either as an unextended Substance, or as a thinking extended Matter;the difficulty to conceive either, will, whilst either alone is in hisThoughts, still drive him to the contrary side.