Western Civilization II / Unit 5 WC2 0428 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading Locke on the Mind as White Paper
The idea
The exam quotes a passage and asks whose view it is and what it means for knowledge. Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book Two, chapter one, is the type: he asks us to suppose the mind white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas, and asks how it comes to be furnished. His answer is one word, experience. The text read is Project Gutenberg's edition.
In practice
Read it in three moves. First, the image: the mind at birth is blank paper, so nothing is written there in advance. Second, the source: all the materials of reason and knowledge come from experience, which Locke divides into sensation, the senses conveying perceptions of things, and reflection, the mind observing its own operations. Third, the consequence: if knowledge comes from experience, education makes the person, and no one is born to rule or to obey. That is why the anchor places the blank slate beside revocable sovereignty and toleration.
Where people slip
The exam's distractors name Descartes, Voltaire, Burke and Newton. Descartes held some ideas innate, the opposite claim. Burke defended inherited tradition. Newton wrote no theory of mind. The passage's significance is that knowledge is gained through contact with and observation of the world, not imprinted at birth, not fixed against education, and not a counsel of despair about knowing anything.
Your place on the trail
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