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Article: Berkeley, George (1685–1753)
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
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BERKELEY, GEORGE (1685
–
1753)
BERKELEY, GEORGE
(1685
–
1753), bishop of Cloyne, Anglo-Irish philosopher and cleric. Berkeley was born near Kilkenny; little is known of his parents, but they seem to have been minor gentry who claimed some allegiance to the powerful English aristocrats of the same name. In any case Berkeley went to good schools, studying first at Kilkenny College and then Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his B.A. (1704) and M.A. (1707) and became a junior fellow. In his early years at Trinity he wrote
An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision
(1709), in which he argues that our perception of depth is a matter of inference from experience, and the two works ...