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|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 our understanding of philosophy lie within scientific knowledge and scientific change come from his two major philosophical works: ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1738) and ''Enquiries concerning Human Understanding''(1748). 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 inductionjustifiability of knowledge derived from inductive reasoning.[[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.