John Locke. Ideas and reasoning ability
John Locke was born in Wrington in 1632. After graduating from Oxford in 1656, he stayed at the university and subsequently chose the profession of a physician. A fortunate confluence of circumstances allowed him to move to London in 1667 and become the personal physician and secretary of the Earl of Shaftesbury, a member of the government, the leader of the Whig party in parliament, which, in turn, opened up a wide field for Locke to work in the field of public service, to participate in politics and scientific activities – Locke became an active member of the Royal Society, the English Academy of Sciences. Shaftesbury’s transition to open opposition to the king and his subsequent death forced Locke to emigrate to Holland in 1683. In Holland, Locke completed work on his main philosophical work, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” and published it in England in 1690, after his return. At the same time, he anonymously published Two Treatises on Government, containing his political philosophy, and An Epistle on Toleration, which he had been working on in the preceding years. Later, he wrote Thoughts on Education (1693) and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695). Locke died in 1704.