Rayner under fire...

In his time the prevailing wisdom of the human body was the Greek theory of the four humours. Look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about. What Hume is known for today is being the father of empiricism. Science is all based on experiments with various substances and observing what they do under different experimental conditions. When he stepped into the world the way you understood what the problem was, was through religion. Had you upset the gods and so on. Can't you see that if this step had not been taken we would still be on the same level of intellect as tribesmen in a jungle. It's knowing where to start. You see science as obvious now, but it never existed in his age. He had to invent it. The way he did though is fascinating. It is very difficult to follow mind you. Of course it is easy to scoff at him in hindsight, but seeing how he did it shows what a huge step he made, even in a rather obscure and very confusing way, he made it across the river and set it all in motion. what followed was the period of the Enlightenment. Hume's the man responsible for everything that followed like the first industrial revolution in the world. The remarkable thing is he wrote this book very early on in his life.