ABSTRACT
In the philosophical literature, there is some debate over whether Locke is a mechanist. In this essay I explain why Locke both appears to accept and criticize the mechanical philosophy. I then argue that Locke is a ‘conceptual mechanist’ in the sense that he accepts the intelligibility of both the corpuscular ontology and mechanical explanations, but he is keen to show that our accounts of cohesion, body, and causation are philosophically inadequate for a mechanical science of nature.
