Oh dear, where can the matter be?
George Berkeley (1685–1753), philosopher, bishop, librarian, academic, spent many of his formative years within the walls of Trinity College Dublin. He undertook his undergraduate degree at just fifteen, having previously been educated at Kilkenny College. Elected to Junior Fellowship in 1707 and Senior Fellowship in 1717, he was not in residence for the entirety of his fellowship, undertaking travel throughout England and a European Grand Tour. He did however remain a member of College until his appointment to the Deanery of Derry in 1724.
Most of his best-known works were published during his tenure as Fellow, including An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), and A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710). This latter work is perhaps his most famous, and puts forward his theory of idealism. This essentially posits that the external world only appears to exist, being, in fact, a series and pattern of ideas within the mind and God’s observation of all ideas at all times keeps the apparent structure of the world stable.
Berkeley’s immaterialism is amusingly summed up in Mons. Ronald Knox’s double limerick:
There was a young man, who said: “God,
Must think it exceedingly odd,
To find that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the quad”.
Dear Sir, your astonishment’s odd.
I am always about in the quad.
And that’s why the tree
Continues to be
When observed by, Yours faithfully, God.
Lord Byron was perhaps less forgiving when observing: “When Bishop Berkeley said ‘there was no matter,’ And proved it — ’twas no matter what he said.”
Appointed at the age of 24, Berkeley served as College Librarian from November 1709 to November 1710, and may well have consulted with architect Thomas Burgh regarding the plans for, what has now become known as, the Old Library. Upon completion it was the longest single-chamber library in all of Europe: a veritable Leviathan.
Berkeley’s ambitions for the spread of education to the New World prompted his attempting to found a college in Bermuda: this floundered due to a lack of funding. Nonetheless he is remembered at Yale University, which benefitted from his donation of books to its library, and UC Berkeley (indirectly) bears his name as the city of Berkeley, California, was named for the Bishop on the basis of his Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America, the last stanza runs:
“Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The first four Acts already past,
A fifth shall close the Drama with the day;
Time’s noblest offspring is the last”.
He died at Oxford in 1753 and was buried in the chapel of Christ Church College.
References:
‘The Library Buildings up to 1970’, Brendan Grimes, from Essays on the history of Trinity College Library Dublin, ed. V. Kinane and A. Walsh; Four Courts Press, 2000
Trinity College Dublin 1592–1952, An academic history, R.B. McDowell & D.A. Webb: Trinity College Dublin Press, 2004
Text © 2017, Joseph O’Gorman
Authenticity Tours & Arch Device © 2017, Authenticity Tours Ltd.
