Sophie's World - 4

“If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.” ~ John Locke

In the novel “Sophie’s World” a whole chapter is devoted to Locke.  Locke was a 17th century philosopher who had both interesting and poor (in a personal opinion) views of many different topics.  The quote above I found to be very interesting; Locke points out how some people won’t do thinks because they can’t do them in a certain way, in this case flying versus walking.  There are unfortunately people who still behave like this today, more than three centuries later.  Usually it is something much simpler than flying but many people won’t “be able” to do something because they can’t get there, while this is often understandable it can also easily be resolved with a little added effort. 

But more specifically in this context Locke is talking about those who give up because their desired way or thinking doesn’t work.  Instead Locke suggests that we should morph our thought process to reflect what we know and can do, as opposed to disparaging over what may seem impossibly complex.

This quote really shows what the chapter tries to explain about Locke.  Locke’s view about the belief that one can never know everything, and therefore we must not believe anything that shows up on our radar is that this statement is entirely false, while you can’t know everything you can learn from experience to congeal as much information as possible.