ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Okay, imagine you have a toy that you really like playing with. Let's say it's a puzzle. You know how to solve the puzzle and you feel proud of yourself when you do.

Now imagine someone else comes along who has never seen the puzzle before. They don't know how to solve it yet. But they want to learn. So what do they do? They need to use their understanding.

Understanding is how our brains figure things out. When you look at the puzzle, you use your eyes to see the pieces and your brain to figure out how they fit together. You might use trial and error or you might use logic to solve it. Either way, you're using your understanding of how puzzles work.

This is what an essay concerning human understanding is all about. It's a book written by a man named John Locke a long time ago. He wanted to explain how our brains work and how we learn things.

He talked about things called ideas. Ideas are like puzzle pieces in your brain. When you learn something new, it's like adding a new puzzle piece. As you learn more and more, you start to see how the pieces fit together. This is how you build understanding.

Locke also thought that our experiences shape our understanding. He said that we're born with some basic ideas, like the idea of time and space. But most of our understanding comes from what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. So every time you play with your puzzle, for example, you're adding to your understanding of puzzles.

Overall, an essay concerning human understanding is a book that tries to explain how our brains work and how we learn things. It's like a guidebook for our minds. By understanding how we understand, we can learn even more and become even smarter!