{
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    "id": "locke.essay_human_understanding",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/john-locke/essay-human-understanding/reference-b2-c21-s17/",
    "language": "en",
    "title": "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding",
    "author": "John Locke",
    "date": "1689-1700; revised lifetime editions",
    "summary": "The Essay examines the origin and composition of ideas, personal identity, and the limits of knowledge.",
    "learning": "Take a disputed term, trace the ideas composing it, then separate what experience warrants as knowledge from what remains probable judgment.",
    "long_summary": "This edition joins three English Gutenberg transcriptions to Pierre Coste’s historical French translation. Canonical identity follows book, chapter and section. Sections missing from one manifestation remain monolingual and are never attached to a neighbor.\n\nThe reading distinguishes sensation and reflection, simple and complex ideas, qualities, identity, knowledge and probability. The 1975 editorial PDF remains a doxographer witness outside dialogue.",
    "historical_context": "The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.",
    "material_world_label": "World of 1989",
    "material_world": {
        "technology": "Personal computers, satellites, video, industrial robots, and expensive mobile phones exist, but the public Web does not yet.",
        "science": "Computing, genetics, climate science, cosmology, and medical imaging produce growing data and international collaboration.",
        "medicine": "CT, MRI, transplantation, vaccines, and intensive care advance; the AIDS epidemic exposes both medical capacity and its limits.",
        "transport": "Cars, high-speed rail, metros, aircraft, and containers globalize people and goods.",
        "agriculture": "Machinery, chemical inputs, breeding, and cold chains support high yields with increasingly debated social and environmental costs.",
        "communication": "Fixed telephones, fax, television, radio, and newspapers predominate. Email and computer networks remain mainly professional or academic.",
        "clothing": "Loose suits, jeans, trainers, women’s power suits, sportswear, and urban subcultures create highly varied silhouettes."
    },
    "material_world_scenes": [
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-01.webp",
            "title": "Technology, science, and care",
            "description": "Personal computers, satellites, video, industrial robots, and expensive mobile phones exist, but the public Web does not yet. Computing, genetics, climate science, cosmology, and medical imaging produce growing data and international collaboration. CT, MRI, transplantation, vaccines, and intensive care advance; the AIDS epidemic exposes both medical capacity and its limits."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-02.webp",
            "title": "Travel and communication",
            "description": "Cars, high-speed rail, metros, aircraft, and containers globalize people and goods. Fixed telephones, fax, television, radio, and newspapers predominate. Email and computer networks remain mainly professional or academic."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-03.webp",
            "title": "Farming and food",
            "description": "Machinery, chemical inputs, breeding, and cold chains support high yields with increasingly debated social and environmental costs."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-04.webp",
            "title": "Clothing, women and men",
            "description": "Loose suits, jeans, trainers, women’s power suits, sportswear, and urban subcultures create highly varied silhouettes."
        }
    ],
    "intellectual_tradition": {
        "id": "modern-philosophy",
        "label": "Modern and contemporary philosophy"
    },
    "period": {
        "id": "modern",
        "label": "Modern era"
    },
    "languages": [
        "en",
        "fr"
    ],
    "manifestations": [
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            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/john_locke/essay_human_understanding/representations/en.ndjson",
            "language": "en",
            "records": 1079,
            "role": "source_language_transcription",
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            "coverage": "complete_for_attested_edition_boundaries",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/john_locke/essay_human_understanding/representations/fr.ndjson",
            "language": "fr",
            "records": 1093,
            "role": "historical_translation",
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            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/john_locke/essay_human_understanding/representations/ai-generated/en-gpt-5-6-sol-corpus-passage-translation-v1.ndjson",
            "generated_on": "2026-09-30",
            "language": "en",
            "model": "gpt-5.6-sol",
            "official_status": "non_official",
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            "role": "ai_generated_translation_non_official",
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            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation"
        },
        {
            "coverage": "fills_missing_source_attested_coverage",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/john_locke/essay_human_understanding/representations/ai-generated/fr-gpt-5-6-sol-corpus-passage-translation-v1.ndjson",
            "generated_on": "2026-09-30",
            "language": "fr",
            "model": "gpt-5.6-sol",
            "official_status": "non_official",
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            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation"
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    ],
    "concepts": [
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul"
        },
        {
            "id": "degrees_of_knowledge_and_probability",
            "label": "Degrees of knowledge and probability"
        },
        {
            "id": "ether_field",
            "label": "Ether and field"
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family"
        },
        {
            "id": "freedom",
            "label": "Freedom"
        },
        {
            "id": "ideas_from_sensation_and_reflection",
            "label": "Ideas from sensation and reflection"
        },
        {
            "id": "impressions_and_assent",
            "label": "Impressions and assent"
        },
        {
            "id": "knowledge",
            "label": "Knowledge"
        },
        {
            "id": "mode",
            "label": "Mode"
        },
        {
            "id": "nominal_and_real_essence",
            "label": "Nominal and real essence"
        },
        {
            "id": "personal_identity_and_consciousness",
            "label": "Personal identity and consciousness"
        },
        {
            "id": "primary_and_secondary_qualities",
            "label": "Primary and secondary qualities"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "id": "service",
            "label": "Service"
        },
        {
            "id": "simple_and_complex_ideas",
            "label": "Simple and complex ideas"
        },
        {
            "id": "sin",
            "label": "Sin"
        },
        {
            "id": "truth",
            "label": "Truth"
        }
    ],
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        "locke.essay_human_understanding"
    ],
    "passages": 1114,
    "word_count": 257071,
    "word_counts_by_language": {
        "en": 257071,
        "fr": 297020
    },
    "editorial_status": "gpt_5_6_semantic_draft_v1",
    "structure": {
        "citation_scheme": "locke-essay-book-chapter-section-v1",
        "kind": "native",
        "levels": [
            {
                "key": "book",
                "label_fr": "Livre",
                "label_en": "Book"
            },
            {
                "key": "chapter",
                "label_fr": "Chapitre",
                "label_en": "Chapter"
            },
            {
                "key": "section",
                "label_fr": "Section",
                "label_en": "Section"
            }
        ],
        "leaf_fr": "Section",
        "leaf_en": "Section"
    },
    "canonical_passage_id": "passage:locke.essay_human_understanding:B2.C21.S17",
    "canonical_ref": "B2.C21.S17",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "However, the name FACULTY, which men have given to this power called the will, and whereby they have been led into a way of talking of the will as acting, may, by an appropriation that disguises its true sense, serve a little to palliate the absurdity; yet the will, in truth, signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or choose: and when the will, under the name of a faculty, is considered as it is, barely as an ability to do something, the absurdity in saying it is free, or not free, will easily discover itself. For, if it be reasonable to suppose and talk of faculties as distinct beings that can act, (as we do, when we say the will orders, and the will is free,) it is fit that we should make a speaking faculty, and a walking faculty, and a dancing faculty, by which these actions are produced, which are but several modes of motion; as well as we make the will and understanding to be faculties, by which the actions of choosing and perceiving are produced, which are but several modes of thinking. And we may as properly say that it is the singing faculty sings, and the dancing faculty dances, as that the will chooses, or that the understanding conceives; or, as is usual, that the will directs the understanding, or the understanding obeys or obeys not the will: it being altogether as proper and intelligible to say that the power of speaking directs the power of singing, or the power of singing obeys or disobeys the power of speaking.",
            "edition": "Project Gutenberg transcription of Locke author text",
            "source_id": "gutenberg-10615",
            "translation_type": "source_language_transcription"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "Quoi que le mot de Faculté que les Hommes ont donné à cette Puiſſance qu’on appelle Volonté, & qui les a engagez à parler de la Volonté comme d’un ſujet agiſſant, puiſſe un peu ſervir à pallier cette abſurdité, à la faveur d’une adaptation qui en déguiſe le veritable ſens, il eſt pourtant vrai que dans le fond la Volonté ne ſignifie autre choſe qu’une puiſſance, ou capacité de préferer ou choiſir ; & par conſéquent, ſi ſous le nom de faculté l’on la regarde ſimplement comme une capacité de faire quelque choſe, ainſi qu’elle eſt effectivement, on verra ſans peine combien il eſt abſurde de dire que la Volonté eſt, ou n’eſt pas libre. Car s’il peut être raiſonnable de ſuppoſer les Facultez comme autant d’Etres diſtincts qui puiſſent agir, & d’en parler ſous cette idée, comme nous avons accoûtumé de faire lorſque nous diſons que la Volonté ordonne, que la Volonté eſt libre, &c. il faut que nous établiſſions auſſi une Faculté parlante, une Faculté marchante, & une Faculté danſante, par leſquelles ſoient produites les actions de parler, de marcher, & de danſer, qui ne ſont que différentes Modifications du Mouvement, tout de même que nous faiſons de la Volonté & de l’Entendement des Facultez par qui ſont produites les actions de choiſir & d’appercevoir qui ſont que différens Modes de la Penſée. De ſorte que nous parlons auſſi proprement en diſant, que c’eſt la Faculté chantante qui chante, & la Faculté danſante qui danſe, que lors que nous diſons, que c’eſt la Volonté qui choiſit, ou l’Entendement qui conçoit, ou, comme on a accoûtumé de s’exprimer, que la Volonté dirige l’Entendement, ou que l’Entendement obéit ou n’obéit pas à la Volonté. Car diroit, que la puiſſance de parler dirige la puiſſance de chanter, ou que la puiſſance de chanter obéit, ou déſobéit à la puiſſance de parler, s’exprimeroit d’une maniére auſſi propre & auſſi intelligible.",
            "translator": "Pierre Coste",
            "edition": "Pierre Mortier, Amsterdam, 1735, third edition",
            "source_id": "wikisource-rev-14176341",
            "translation_type": "historical_translation"
        }
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}