"As the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences, so the only solid foundation we can give this science itself must be laid on experience and observation."

(Introduction to "A Treatise of Human Nature")

Born in Scotland, Hume attended Edinburgh University, initially with the aim of a career in law. Having abandoned law and worked for a brief time in merchant's office in Bristol, he went to France, where he wrote "A Treatise on Human Nature". It was published anonymously and was not well received. Parts of the Treatise were rewritten and published in separate volumes, but it was for his "History of England" that he became most admired during his lifetime. He returned to France as secretary to the British Embassy and was later Undersecretary of State in London. He continued to edit his writings in his retirement.

Hume was a materialist and empiricist. His constant question was "Upon what impression received by the senses does this concept rest?" Any failing this test were to be "committed to the flames" as mere sophistry and illusion. Hume denies any verifiable reality to substance, material or spiritual, and any necessary connection between cause and effect. He carries the empiricist insistence on experience as the basis of all knowledge to its inevitable conclusion - the impossibility of knowledge. We may conduct numerous experiments and each time observe that water freezes at the same temperature. On what basis do we then predict that this will always be so? We have no way of verifying that water will always begin to freeze at the same temperature or indeed that the sun will rise tomorrow. Such propositions are based on mere association of ideas through habit, psychological expectancy and compulsion - little more than animal faith.