Hartley's Theories
The outlines of Hartley's theory are as follows. Like John Locke, he asserted that, prior to sensation, the human mind is a blank slate. By a growth from simple sensations, those states of consciousness which appear most remote from sensation come into being. And the one law of growth of which Hartley took account was the law of contiguity, synchronous and successive. By this law he sought to explain, not only the phenomena of memory, which others had similarly explained before him, but also the phenomena of emotion, of reasoning, and of voluntary and involuntary action (see Association of Ideas). A friend, associate, and one of his chief advocates, was Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), the discoverer of oxygen. Priestley was one of the foremost scientists of his age.
Read more about this topic: David Hartley (philosopher)
Famous quotes containing the word theories:
“Whatever practical people may say, this world is, after all, absolutely governed by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas. It is a matter of the very greatest importance that our theories of things that seem a long way apart from our daily lives, should be as far as possible true, and as far as possible removed from error.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)