ABSTRACT
Published in 1748, David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is an account of the origins of our beliefs about the world. It is one of the greatest works of the British empiricist tradition in philosophy. Through his philosophy, Hume attempted to understand something that science had not yet explained: the workings of the human mind. The history of psychology sees Hume's arguments as pioneering attempts to understand the human mind by using scientific methods. Although later psychologists adopted more complex models of the mind, Hume's theory of the mind was an influential early attempt. In the discipline of philosophy, Hume contributed to epistemology, or the study of knowledge. Hume's Enquiry is also a beautifully written book, well worth reading just for his prose style. It is clear evidence of the reason many regard Hume as one of the greatest philosophical writers.
