David Hume, (born May 7 [April 26, Old Style], 1711, Edinburgh, Scotland—died August 25,

1776, Edinburgh), Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist known especially for
his philosophical empiricism and skepticism.
Hume conceived of philosophy as the inductive, experimental science of human nature. Taking
the scientific method of the English physicist Sir Isaac Newton as his model and building on the
epistemology of the English philosopher John Locke, Hume tried to describe how the mind
works in acquiring what is called knowledge. He concluded that no theory of reality is possible;
there can be no knowledge of anything beyond experience. Despite the enduring impact of his
theory of knowledge, Hume seems to have considered himself chiefly as a moralist.
Significance and influence of David Hume
That Hume was one of the major figures of his century can hardly be doubted. So his
contemporaries thought, and his achievement, as seen in historical perspective, confirms that
judgment, though with a shift of emphasis. Some of the reasons for the assessment may be
given under four heads:
As a philosopher
Hume conceived of philosophy as the inductive science of human nature, and he concluded
that humans are creatures more of sensitive and practical sentiment than of reason. For many
philosophers and historians his importance lies in the fact that Immanuel Kant conceived his
critical philosophy in direct reaction to Hume (Kant said that Hume had awakened him from his
“dogmatic slumber”). Hume was one of the influences that led Auguste Comte, the 19th-
century French mathematician and sociologist, to develop positivism. In Britain Hume’s positive
influence is seen in Jeremy Bentham, the early 19th-century jurist and philosopher, who was
moved to utilitarianism (the moral theory that right conduct should be determined by the
usefulness of its consequences) by Book III of the Treatise, and more extensively in John Stuart
Mill, the philosopher and economist who lived later in the 19th century.
In throwing doubt on the assumption of a necessary link between cause and effect, Hume was
the first philosopher of the postmedieval world to reformulate the skepticism of the ancients.
His reformulation, moreover, was carried out in a new and compelling way. Although he
admired Newton, Hume’s subtle undermining of causality called in question the philosophical
basis of Newton’s science as a way of looking at the world, in as much as that science rested on
the identification of a few fundamental causal laws that govern the universe. As a result, the
positivists of the 19th century were obliged to wrestle with Hume’s questioning of causality if
they were to succeed in their aim of making science the central framework of human thought.