editor, Administrators
2,020
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
[[Aristotle]]'s (384 BC-322 BC) account of causation was teleological, and included material, formal, efficient, and final causes. It had, by Hume's time, been rejected in favor of the '''corpuscular mechanistic''' view of causation espoused by Descartes, Locke, and the natural philosophers of the Royal Society of London. In this view, derived from ancient atomism, material bodies are made of invisibly small particles, called corpuscles, and interact with one another mechanically by physical contact. The only form of causation is mechanical, or what Aristotle would have called efficient, causation. [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]] Hume greatly admired the work of Newton, calling him "the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species". [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]] He enthusiastically espoused Newton's experimental philosophy, rejecting speculative hypotheses and seeking to found knowledge on observation, experience, and inductive and deductive reasoning.
no edit summary
|Brief=a Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist; he was one of the first important philosophers to write in English
|Summary=Hume was a skeptic.[[CiteRef::Fieser (2016)]] Hume’s two largest contributions to the field of philosophy lie within his major philosophical works: ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' and ''Enquiries concerning Human Understanding''. He is perhaps most well known for his interpretation of Aristotle’s causation in terms of matters of fact and relations of ideas, and for questioning the rationality behind induction.[[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]] These are known as Hume’s Fork and The Problem of Induction respectively. These skeptical arguments posed a challenge to many great philosophical minds and continue to challenge philosophers today.
|Historical Context=David Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1711. His family had a modest estate and was socially connected, but not wealthy. Hume was sent with his brother to Edinburgh University when he was 10 or 11 (which was about two years younger than typical) because his family recognized that he was precocious. [[CiteRef::Norton (2009)]] He studied Latin and Greek, read widely in history, literature, and ancient and modern philosophy, and also studied some mathematics and natural philosophy. [[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)]][[CiteRef:: Harris (2015)|p. 35-65]] Following the completion of his studies, Hume rejected his family's plan that he become a lawyer, and instead determined to become a scholar and philosopher, engaging in three years of intensive personal study. Although little is known of his activities during his schooling and afterwards, he would have spent the fourth year of the curriculum at Edinburgh studying natural philosophy, and would have been exposed to experimental natural philosophy, including the theories of [[Isaac Newton]] (1643-1727). [[CiteRef::Harris (2015)|p. 38-40]] Newton had published his ''Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'') in which he put forth his '''laws of motion''', '''law of universal gravitation''', and his inductive '''experimental philosophy''' more than thirty years earlier in 1687. [[CiteRef:: Westfall (1999)]][[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]] By about 1700 Newton's theory had become accepted in Britain. [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 210]] Like many of his times, Hume revered Newton, calling him "the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species". [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]] The works of other experimental philosophers were also available to the young Hume. The natural philosophy library at Edinburgh, to which Hume is known to have contributed, contained an extensive collection of the works of the experimental philosopher Robert Boyle(1627-1691), as well as the works of [[Rene Descartes]] (1596-1650), and [[John Locke]]'s (1632-1704) ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding''. This work, published in 1689, propounded Locke's '''empiricist''' view of human knowledge. The library included some controversial works, such as those of the '''materialist''' Thomas Hobbs (1588-1679). [[CiteRef::Harris (2015)|p. 38-40]][[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]] [[Aristotle]]'s (384 BC-322 BC) account of causation was teleological, and included material, formal, efficient, and final causes. It had, by Hume's time, been rejected in favour of the '''corpuscular mechanistic''' view of causation espoused by Descartes, Locke, and the experimental natural philosophers of the Royal Society of London. In this view, derived from ancient atomism, material bodies are made of invisibly small particles, called corpuscles, and interact with one another mechanically by physical contact. The only form of causation is mechanical, or what Aristotle would have called efficient, causation. [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]] Hume enthusiastically espoused Newton's experimental philosophy, which rejected speculative hypotheses and sought to found knowledge on observation, experience, and inductive and deductive reasoning. Newton had been unable to explain his gravitational force in terms of corpuscular mechanism. He saw his inductive method as an alternative to the demands of a corpuscularism that stood in the way of the acceptance of a mathematically lawful gravitational force on its own terms. Although Newton's theories and Locke's empiricism were seen by early eighteenth century thinkers to constitute a unified system, this system was not without problems. Locke retained the notion of a hypothetical hidden corpuscular microstructure and the associated notion of a metaphysically necessary connection between cause and effect. [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]][[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]] Hume's Newton inspired skepticism of speculative metaphysical hypotheses led him to call corpuscularism and accepted notions of causation into question.
Though strongly indebted to Locke, he rejected his idea of the containment of the effect in the cause, the postulation of a hidden corpuscular microstructure and the associated notion of a metaphysically necessary connection between cause and effect.
