He was either bald or very hairy. We will never know. Personally, I
like Berkeley with hair better than bald Berkeley.
On March 12th 1685, he was born in Kilkenny,
Ireland. In 1696 he went to Kilkenny College until he went to Trinity College
four years later. He ended up earning a doctorate. In the expectations of
society, like a man of his education should, he was ordained as an Anglican
Priest in 1710. He traveled to London in 1713 and befriended many people
including Richard Steele, who Berkeley contributed many articles for on
agnosticism (Even though he is a priest). After marrying, he and his bride went
to the Americans to establish a seminary in 1728. He settled in Rhode Islands
while he waited for promised grant money. He wrote much of his work Alciphron which defends Christianity
against free thinking. Upon his return of a failed seminary build in Bermuda,
he became a Bishop.
One of his greatest works was The New Theory of Vision. He says the purpose of it was “to shew
the manner wherein we perceive by sight the distance, magnitude, and situation
of object.” He agrees that distance is not seen right away. Berkeley disagrees
with Descartes in the matter of how people perceive the size of objects. He
does not think it has to do with natural geometry.
Berkeley believes that what we perceive is relative to the
way we perceive something else. (We can see someone is scared when we notice
their face is pale).
Linking Berkeley to Locke, Berkeley feels that Locke’s
account of abstract ideas was the best. In fact he wrote in his notebooks,
“Wonderful in Locke that he could wn advanc’d in years seat all thro a mist yt
had been so long a gathering and was consequently think. This more to be
admir’d than yt he didn’t see farther.” In modern day terms, Berkeley thought
Locke was the man and super smart.
Here is a video of quotes. This man had some interesting/thought provoking ones.
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