August 03

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac was born in Grenoble in 1715 and became a central figure of French Enlightenment thought. In his seminal work 'Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge,' he proposed that the mind is a blank slate at birth and that all ideas are derived from sensation. Condillac developed the statue thought experiment to illustrate how language and thought emerge from sensory input. His empirical approach influenced later philosophers such as Diderot and Condorcet. Condillac also wrote on economic theory and the history of commerce. He died in 1780, leaving an enduring mark on epistemology and psychology.