An Analysis Of Empiricists’ Space-time Ideas

The issue on space and time is an essential one of philosophy, and western philosophies from the ancient to the present almost relate to space and time. The views of space and time are important views of modern empiricism, but the literature that discuss systematically empiricists’ views of space-time and their evolvements can be found a little. This thesis will treats in detail empiricists’ views of space-time, separately narrates Locke’s, Berkeley’s and Hume’s contents of space-time views, analyses the significances of their space-time views to their respective philosophies, summarizes the evolvement of their space-time views, and elaborates the influences of empiricists’ space-time views to Kant’s space-time views. In the "Introduction" the author briefly introduces the pre-empiricists’ space-time ideas, summarizes the evolvement of concepts of "space" and "time" from ancient Greek to early modern times, and introduces Newton’s "absolute view of space-time ". The text is divided into four chapters. Locke’s views of space-time are discussed in the first chapters. Locke believes that the idea of "space" comes from vision and touch, and the idea of "time" from reflection. In the sense of "absolute space-time", Locke’s views of space-time basically inherited Newton’s views of space-time, but his theory of "idea" stressed the mental character of space- time. The "subjectivity" of Locke’s views of spacetime made preparation for Kant’s transcendental aesthetics. In the second chapter the author discusses Berkeley’s views of space-time. Berkeley denies completely the existence of an external world by thorough experience. As same as Locke’s view, Berkeley thinks that space is subjective too, but also that space is relative. Independent matter may not exists in the subjective and relative space, so he said: "Nothing exists beyond the mind". About time, Berkeley inherited Lock’s view of time, and claims that time is ideal and continual. As same as Locke’s claim, Berkeley thinks that "duration" and "time" is also a large number of ideas and behaviors which "follow one another " in mind. However, different with Locke, Berkeley objects to "the absolute time" from abstraction, that is to say time is relative. Berkeley looks space and time as human’s subjective products, and bases it on the philosophical proposition "esse est percipi ence(to be is to be perceived)".The third chapter discusses Hume’s views of space-time. Hume thinks that the idea of space comes from impressions which the external things give people, and the permutation and combination of impressions constitute the idea of "space",and that "time" is continuous human perception. Different from Locke and Berkeley, Hume subdivides "perception" into “idea” and “impression”. The idea of "time" appears actually as the continuation of impressions. Thus it can be seen that time is subjective and relative. Besides, the ideas of space-time are necessary conditions for causality, and causality is a necessary condition for forming people’s empirical knowledge. So, the ideas of space-time is the basis of Hume’s theory of knowledge. In the fourth chapter, the author treats the evolvement of empiricists’ views of space-time and the influence for Kant’s views of space-time. The first section is divided into the evolvement of space and the evolvement of time, and outlines the evolvements of ideas of “space” and “time” in Locke’s,Berkeley’s and Hume’s philosophies. About the idea of “space”, there is the relation of inherit, criticism and development in the evolvement of Locke’s,Berkeley’s and Hume’s ideas of space; about the idea of time, the evolvement of the idea of time in Locke’s,Berkeley’s and Hume’s philosophies is clear too. The way that Locke makes time into idea influenced immediately Berkeley and Hume, who emphasize the subjectivity of time; but Locke’s “general time” from Newton’s viewpoint was rejected by Berkeley and Hume. In the second section, the influence of empiricists’ viewpoints of space-time to Kant’s viewpoint of space-time is discussed. In his viewpoint of space-time, Kant stresses the subjectivity of space-time which comes from empiricists’ viewpoints. Kant opposes Newton’s the viewpoint of space-time of objectivity and in the subjective sense reserves the absolute space-time; but he does not agree with the viewpoint of space-time from experience, and makes space-time as the transcendental conditions of sensibility for human knowledge.