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Hume, David

(Encyclopedia)Hume, David hyo͞om [key], 1711–76, Scottish philosopher and historian. Educated at Edinburgh, he lived (1734–37) in France, where he finished his first philosophical work, A Treatise of Human Nat...

Hume, John

(Encyclopedia)Hume, John, 1937–2020, Northern Irish political leader. A moderate Catholic, he devoted his career to the peaceful settlement of sectarian conflicts in his homeland. Hume began by seeking to improve...

Hume, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Hume, Joseph, 1777–1855, English politician and reformer. Although a Tory in early life, he sat in Parliament from 1818 to 1855 (with only one interruption) as an indefatigable Radical. Hume was a l...

Hume Reservoir

(Encyclopedia)Hume Reservoir, c.70 sq mi (180 sq km), on the Murray River, near Albury-Wodonga, on the Victoria–New South Wales border, Australia. It is the largest water-storage area in Australia. Impounded by H...

Carothers, Wallace Hume

(Encyclopedia)Carothers, Wallace Hume kərŭᵺˈərz [key], 1896–1937, American chemist, b. Burlington, Iowa. He received his doctorate at the Univ. of Illinois in 1924, then taught organic chemistry there and a...

belief

(Encyclopedia)belief, in philosophy, commitment to something, involving intellectual assent. Philosophers have disagreed as to whether belief is active or passive; René Descartes held that it is a matter of will, ...

causality

(Encyclopedia)causality, in philosophy, the relationship between cause and effect. A distinction is often made between a cause that produces something new (e.g., a moth from a caterpillar) and one that produces a c...

sensationalism

(Encyclopedia)sensationalism, in philosophy, the theory that there are no innate ideas and that knowledge is derived solely from the sense data of experience. The idea was discussed by Greek philosophers and is sho...

Trimble of Lisnagarvey, William David Trimble, Baron

(Encyclopedia)Trimble of Lisnagarvey, William David Trimble, Baron, 1944–, Northern Irish political leader, grad. Queens Univ., Belfast (LL.B.). A Protestant Unionist, he became (1969) a barrister and taught law ...

empiricism

(Encyclopedia)empiricism ĕmpĭrˈĭsĭzəm [key] [Gr.,=experience], philosophical doctrine that all knowledge is derived from experience. For most empiricists, experience includes inner experience—reflection upo...