ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Adam Smith’s posthumously published essay, “The History of Astronomy” (HA), in light of Hume. It focuses on Hume’s naturalism and deals with Smith’s sentimental account of inquiry and his understanding of the pillars of Humean belief formation that precede inquiry–belief in the external existence of objects and in causal connections. The chapter examines Smith’s presentation of reason for skepticism and his deepest-to-date view of scientific knowledge and explores smith’s rhetorical slide towards realism. It provides an important piece of Smith’s account in that it highlights the unchanging nature of the sentimental principles of inquiry. Christopher Berry speaks of a “conspicuously Humean passage” in HA where Smith evinces a roundly Humean understanding of causation. Smith’s HA appears to have been designed to convey a similar message–it illustrates the logic of Humean naturalism both in its explicit framing of the psychology of science in terms of natural belief and in its broader rhetorical and structural design.
