George Berkeley (1685–1753) was an Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop, born in County Kilkenny and educated at Trinity College Dublin, where he later became a fellow. He is best known for his theory of immaterialism, the idea that material objects do not exist independently of the mind, expressed in his phrase “esse est percipi” (“to be is to be perceived”). Berkeley argued that what we call physical objects are really just collections of sensory experiences, and that their continued existenc