George Berkeley

1685-1753

Irish Philosopher

George Berkeley is best remembered for his attempt to reconcile religion and science through his empiricist philosophy that separated a phenomenon's true existence from attempts to explain it through scientific laws and theories.

Berkeley received his formal education at Kilkenny College and at Trinity College in Dublin, receiving his B.A. degree in 1704. He was elected a fellow of Trinity in 1707 and remained associated with the College until 1724 when he became the Dean of Derry. In 1733 he was elevated to the position of Bishop of Cloyne.

Berkeley read widely and became thoroughly familiar with the scientific and philosophical developments that grew out of Newtonian physics. As a result of his deep religious convictions, he attempted to overcome the apparent conflict between the religious and scientific perceptions of the world. He became a spokesman for the Anglican church and a defender of the Christian faith in the effort to counteract attempts by some of science's more ardent supporters to use the ability of science to predict and explain natural phenomena, thereby dismissing the necessity of God. In the process, he criticized what he perceived as logical contradictions in Isaac Newton's (1642-1727) mechanics and attacked the deists. He also developed a unique philosophy of science and reality. His principal publications included Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in 1713, and De motin in 1721.

Philosophically Berkeley was an empiricist, believing that everything, except the spiritual, exists only as it is perceived by the senses. He was strongly opposed to the materialists who maintained that the world is made up only of material objects that act, and are acted on, mechanically and that obey laws of natural necessity that science can determine. He believed that objects and phenomena do not have a material existence but exist only as ideas in the mind of the perceiver. He asserted, however, that all such ideas are invariably in the mind of God and that humans receive the ideas of the phenomena that make up their existence through communion with God. Berkeley's philosophy, for this reason, is sometimes also labeled subjective idealism.

Berkeley's thought has been influential in the history of philosophy because it laid the foundation for later secular empiricists such as David Hume (1711-1776). It has had its greatest effect on the history and philosophy of science through his so-called instrumentalist views. He held that scientific theories are nothing more than tools for predicting the course of natural processes and are neither true nor false, merely useful. For him, Newton's equations are simply mathematical methods for the calculation of observed phenomena: they are not explanations of the phenomena. Scientific laws and theories are summaries of how objects behave under certain circumstances and predictions of how they will behave; they do not provide any real understanding of the phenomena they describe. He also pointed out that the observed data cannot uniquely determine a theory that explains them: more than one theory may be developed to explain the observations.

He believed that in order for humans to use knowledge, it must be linked to experiences that they can understand. In other words, our understanding of a new phenomenon is based on its relationship by analogy to experiences that we have already had; our understanding is dependent on the objects and events that we, as human beings, are capable of experiencing, and these are, of necessity, limited. Berkeley held that science is a "useful fiction" and that its explanations are mental constructs that are different from actual fact. His ideas have become more widely accepted as literal interpretations of scientific theory have became more and more difficult.