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Arthur Collier
British philosopher
Quick Facts
- Born:
- Oct. 12, 1680, Langford Magna, Wiltshire, Eng.
- Died:
- September 1732 (aged 51)
Arthur Collier (born Oct. 12, 1680, Langford Magna, Wiltshire, Eng.—died September 1732) was an idealist philosopher and theologian remembered for his concept of human knowledge. Collier was born at the rectory of Langford Magna. Educated at Pembroke and Balliol colleges, Oxford, he became rector at Langford Magna in 1704. Like the idealist thinker George Berkeley, Collier denied that an external world exists independent of that conceptualized by a mind. In his major work, Clavis Universalis (1713; “Universal Key”), he argued that men dare not conclude that what seems to perception to be external is actually external, for such objects as ...(100 of 281 words)