John Locke

About John Locke

John Locke (1632–1704) stands as a towering figure in Western thought, ranking #202 in MIT's measure of historical importance. As an influential Enlightenment philosopher, his key contribution was developing political theories centered on natural rights-life, liberty, and property-which profoundly shaped modern democratic structures, most notably influencing the American Declaration of Independence. His empiricist philosophy also argued that the mind at birth is a tabula rasa (blank slate), forming the basis for much subsequent psychological and educational theory.

Despite this foundational historical importance, Locke's contemporary internet attention, measured by 1.0 million Wikipedia views in 2025, reveals a significant disconnect. This volume places him in an 'overattention' category of +2x relative to his historical rank. For context, this level of attention is comparable to figures much lower on the importance index. For instance, his 1.0M views are significantly less than the 7.1M views recorded for George W. Bush, ranked #441 in historical importance, indicating that the modern internet dedicates substantially more traffic to recent political figures than to this architect of liberal political thought.

This sustained level of attention is, however, slightly waning, as his 2025 view count represents a -10.3% year-over-year decline, alongside an 11% drop in momentum between Q1 and Q3 of the year, suggesting a potential slow drift from the digital forefront.