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.
Aristotle. Division of Sciences, Logic and the Doctrine of Knowledge
Aristotle was born in 384/383 BC in the city of Stagira in Thrace, in the family of the court physician of the Macedonian king Amyntas I. The mentality of the future philosopher was undoubtedly influenced by the traditions of his family, a family of hereditary doctors. Having received his initial education, Aristotle came to Athens in 367 and became a member of Plato’s Academy. Aristotle remained in the Academy until Plato’s death in 347. Probably, already during Plato’s lifetime, disagreements between the great student and his teacher began to emerge; nevertheless, Aristotle’s Platonic training remained with him throughout his life, and in his later works, Aristotle would sometimes write “we, Platonists.”