David Hume

Abstract

David Hume was steered by his parents towards a career in law. Taking a dislike to the subject, he designed his own course of study and began work, at the age of 18, on A Treatise of Human Nature. When the book appeared eight years later, it was received with indifference. Hume reformulated his ideas in a series of works, the most important of which is An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which first appeared in 1748. His plan was to apply the experimental method of Newton to the British empiricists’ study of the human mind. He aimed to produce a truly experimental science of human nature against which rationalist metaphysics could be tested. Hume’s interest in memory was part of his general concern with the nature of knowledge. Hume left philosophy and turned his energies to history and economics, in which field he earned the recognition that had been denied him in philosophy.