  Two features of Locke’s intellectual landscape are most salient for understanding his philosophy of science, one concerning the new science’s methodology, and the other concerning its content. First, then, is the new methodological approach to understanding the natural world, accompanied by profound shifts in conceptions of induction and scientific knowledge, and in disciplinary boundaries. Locke’s reaction is for the most part progressive. Impressed by experimental methods and cognizant of their poor fit with the Aristotelian ideal, he defines a distinct kind of knowledge, one inferior to genuine scientific knowledge but appropriate to human sensory capacities.  In so doing, he develops an epistemological basis for the new, experimental philosophy. Yet his reaction also has its conservative aspect, one that some see as having limited him in the face of the new science’s evolving methodology. He retains as an ideal the notion that scientific knowledge is demonstrative and certain, an ideal he shares with the two main targets of his Essay, the speculative systems of the Aristotelians and the Cartesians. 