Volume 26, 2026

EN:

This article examines the intersection of John Locke’s philosophy and Newtonian mechanical medicine in the writings of the early eighteenth-century apothecary John Quincy. For though Locke’s own medical interests have often been explored, the influence of his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1689) upon the new physiological theories of the early eighteenth century has received comparatively little attention. Quincy’s 1712 translation of Santorio Santori’s Medicina Statica (1614) with his extended “Introduction” and explanatory notes provides a striking and previously overlooked example of an influential medical author systematically reworking Locke’s epistemology to defend new mechanical theories of physiology. Quincy assimilated to Newtonian medicine Locke’s critique of the misuse of words, his rejection of Scholastic substantial forms, and a modified version of his overall theory of knowledge. His later polemical writings, his Pharmacopoia Officinalis (1718), and his Lexicon Physico-Medicum (1719) continued to deploy Lockean principles to undermine alternative physiological theories and to propose a reform of medical terminology. Quincy’s writings thus reveal how Locke’s project of clearing away the rubbish obscuring the path to truth was already shaping an important domain of knowledge in the early eighteenth century.

EN:

Soviet philosophers, following Marx, divided philosophers of the past into two camps: materialistic and idealistic. The representatives of the first, including Locke, were treated as ideological allies; the members of the second were condemned as enemies. This vision determined the interpretations of Soviet Lockean scholars Igor Narskii and Georgii Zaichenko. I discuss their approach to three topics in Locke’s theory: his views on material substance, the distinction between sensations and reflections as the sources of ideas, and ideas of primary and secondary qualities. To bring Locke closer to dialectical materialism, Narskii and Zaichenko accentuate the passages in the Essay where Locke makes positive claims on the existence of material substance, omitting the places where he is more skeptical or agnostic. Speaking of the sources of ideas, both claim that reflection cannot be an independent source; all knowledge ultimately comes from the senses. Both view the distinction between primary and secondary qualities as problematic: Narskii claims the ideas of secondary qualities are subjective; Zaichenko offers a dispositional reading, arguing that they represent particular combinations of particles of matter. Their approach, which combines open bias and elements of forgery with some surprisingly relevant insights, is an unorthodox way to read Locke.

EN:

A review of John Samuel Harpham’s recent book The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2025).