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=== Hume and Scientific Methodology ===
==== Hume’s Fork ====
Aristotle drew a categorical distinction between '''scientific knowledge''' or ''scientia'' and '''belief''', or ''opinio''. Scientific knowledge was a knowledge of causes. Scientific explanation consisted of '''demonstration''', in which a necessary connection between a cause and its effect was proven using intuitively obvious premises independently of experience. Descartes and other corpuscularists maintained this demonstrative ideal of scientific explanation. [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]] Descartes supposed that a mechanical cause is intrinsically and necessarily related to its effect. A demonstrative science was thus possible, because the general principles of physical nature could be deduced from mathematical principles concerning the shape, size, position, motion, and causal interaction among the ultimate corpuscular particles of matter. Newton's inductive method, in which general principles are derived inductively from observation and experiment, was not compatible with
In Hume’s entrance to the debate of causation, Hume translates the Aristotelean distinction between scientific knowledge and belief into his own terms. These are:
* Relations of ideas.
