George Berkeley

George Berkeley

George Berkeley (; 12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753) – known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) – was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). This theory denies the existence of material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are ideas perceived by the mind and, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived. Berkeley is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important premise in his argument for immaterialism.In 1709, Berkeley published his first major work, An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, in which he discussed the limitations of human vision and advanced the theory that the proper objects of sight are not material objects, but light and colour. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of George Berkeley has received more than 1,586,112 page views. His biography is available in 83 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 78 in 2019). George Berkeley is the 65th most popular philosopher (down from 61st in 2019), the 6th most popular biography from Ireland (down from 5th in 2019) and the most popular Irish Philosopher.

Berkeley is most famous for his theory of esse est percipi or "to be is to be perceived."