David Hume

Empiricist philosopher. The Enquiry sharpened scepticism into a tool — most famously in the problem of induction, which has not been put down since.

Works

• 1748

  Treatise

  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

  Hume's mature restatement of his earlier Treatise. Section IV poses the problem of induction in its sharpest form: we have no non-circular ground for expecting the future to resemble the past.