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What did George Berkeley criticize in De Motu?
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George Berkeley
George Berkeley, detail of an oil painting by John Smibert, c. 1732; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
In his 1721 work De Motu, the Irish philosopher George Berkeley criticized Sir Isaac Newtonβs concepts of absolute space, time, and motion. Within this text, Berkeley also provided a veiled hint of his philosophy of immaterialism, a contribution that has led 20th-century scholars to regard him as a precursor to the scientific perspectives of Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein.1