Chapter Four

Hume's Theory of Knowledge

Abstract

David Hume, the last of the three great British empiricists, was born on 26 April, 1711 at Edinburgh, Scotland. He was born seven years after the death of Locke (1632 – 1704) and when Berkley (1685 – 1753) was a young man of 26. His mother, Katherine Falconer, a daughter of Sir David Falconer, was a woman of a singular merit. His father, Joseph Home, was a gentleman. David adopted the spelling 'Hume' when he left Scotland in 1734 to avoid mispronunciation by the English...