Berkeley

Taken out of context, Berkeley's famous doctrine that there is no such thing as matter is easy to misunderstand and underestimate. But by viewing Berkeley against a wider intellectual background than is customary, J.O. Urmson achieves an unusually sympathetic assessment of Berkeley's philosophy.

He sees Berkeley's work as a serious critical analysis of the scientific thought of Newton and his predecessors, and of its metaphysical basis. Urmson starts with a chapter on the philosophy of science accepted from Galileo to Newton, and uses this as a basis for his discussion of Berkeley's writings. He gives a clear account of the relationshipo between Berkeley's metaphysics and his analysis of the concepts of science and common sense.

He shows, too, that Berkeley anticipated by more than two centuries a version of utilitarianism usually thought of as belonging to our own time.