Hume, David
Hume, David, 1711-76, Scottish philosopher and historian. Hume
carried the empiricism of John Locke and George Berkeley to the
logical extreme of radical skepticism. He repudiated the possibility
of certain knowledge, finding in the mind nothing but a series of
sensations, and held that cause-and-effect in the natural world
derives solely from the conjunction of two impressions. Hume's skepticism
is also evident in his writings on religion, in which he rejected
any rational or natural theology. Besides his chief work, A Treatise
of Human Nature (1739-40), he wrote Political Discourses (1752),
The Natural History of Religion (1755), and a History of England
(1754-62) that was, despite errors of fact, the standard work for
many years. |
