British empiricism

The school of British Empiricism of John Locke (1632-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-1776) continued on from the foundations laid by Bacon. It was perhaps no accident that Locke was a medical man, a practitioner. His empiricism was based upon a kind of sensory atomism. He distinguished between primary characteristics of objects such as solidity, figure, extension, motion, rest and secondary characteristics due to the way we perceive them, such as colour, taste and smell. Berkeley, a bishop, disagreed with this separation of existence from perception his famous dictum was to be is to be perceived , Hume anticipated the modern conclusion of the logical positivists... 

F. Pearce and S. Tomhs (1990) Ideology, Hegemony, and Empiricism, British Journal of Criminology, 30/4 423-443. 

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