Abstract

This chapter considers Locke’s account of our general ideas of natural kinds, and in particular of the natural kind “water.” This account came under explicit criticism in the work on the semantics of natural kinds by Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam in the 1970s, which also highlighted this particular natural kind. However, the argument here is that Locke’s detractors had much less right on their side than they suppose. Though there are some deficiencies in Locke’s account, these are due for the most part to his commitment to a theory of the “Great Chain of Being” that has not been borne out by modern science.