Eric Schliesser said:
In the passage, Locke is making a three-way distinction between:
a) the master-builders (some natural philosophers); b) the under-labourers 
(i.e., Lockean philosophers); c) those that speak uncouth (affected, etc) 
terms (presumably the Scholastics and maybe the Cartesians, too). Regardless
of how we are supposed to distinguish between Locke's enterprise and that of
the Master-builders (and I would be the first to admit that Locke's stance 
toward the activities of Huygens and Newton is more ambiguous than this 
passage suggests), I find it hard to see how we are supposed to infer
Locke's criticism of 'scientism' from this passage.



I, in turn, find it hard to see how we can miss it. Locke, after all, was a
pioneer empiricist. However, it is a matter of interpretation, and the
backgrounds different people bring to the table, so let others judge, as
they will anyway.

Mason Gaffney