Sensation and reflection in Locke's "Essay"

Locke arrived on the crest of the Enlightenment and published his second major work, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in 1689. His influence on civilization in the period that followed was indisputable. Thomas Jefferson happily applied Locke's ideas about freedom from The Second Treatise of Government while drafting the U.S. constitution in 1787. Aside from social and political theory, Locke made great contributions to human thought in his demonstrations of empiricism. One such demonstration is found in this Essay.

What makes the Essay such a powerful force in the Enlightenment is its explanation of empirical methods in non-philosophical terms. Any literate person can read his work and participate in the new best practices of thought. Locke is careful to re-iterate throughout this excerpt that he is appealing to "everyone's observation and experience". After challenging recieved knowledge at face value, he guides readers through his empirical claim that "all ideas come from sensation or reflection". Locke calls readers to provide evidence of his claims about the nature of ideas by drawing on their collective bank of knowledge. In attempting to find any idea that could not have originated with either sensation nor reflection, a reader is collecting and analyzing evidence of a hypothesis put before him. He or she may not know it, but they are in fact flying in the face of generations before them who would not dream of challenging the cultural acceptance of "recieved doctrine".