editor, Administrators
2,020
edits
Changes
no edit summary
|DOD Approximate=No
|Brief=a Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist; he is widely considered the most important philosopher to write in the English language.
|Summary=Hume’s contributions to our understanding of 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 most noted for his skeptical views on a variety of topics including human identity, the powers of human reason, metaphysics, and the existence of God.[[CiteRef::Fieser (2016)]] He is perhaps most well best known , first, for rejecting Aristotle’s epistemological distinction between knowledge and belief and replacing with his interpretation of Aristotle’s causation in terms of own distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas. This new distinction is known as Hume's Fork. Secondly, and he is known for questioning the justifiability of knowledge derived from inductive reasoning. The problem he posed is known as Hume's Problem of Induction.[[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]] These are known as Hume’s Fork and The Problem impact of Induction respectively. These these skeptical arguments posed a challenge to many great philosophical minds and continue is still felt to challenge philosophers todaythis day.
|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.