...supported by experience. But its best and most solid foundation K faith and divine revelation. ... When we run over libraries persuaded of these principles. what havoc must we make? If we lake in our hand any volume: of divinity or school metaphysics. for instance: let us ask. Does it contain...

...Hume's famous threat of 1748 to consign all metaphysical, or otherwise worthless, books to the flames: 'When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make?' This possibility was entertained, we should remind ourselves, by a man who was for a time the librarian...

...that would dismiss, a priori, metaphysical theses that might otherwise have seemed worth considering. 'When we run over libraries persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make?' Just like the prospects for a foundationalist philosophy of justification, and for the same reasons,...

...inspiration for the extreme forms of positivism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school of metaphysics, for instance, let us ask does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity...

...natural, is felt more properly than perceived. Or if we reason concerning it and endeavor to fix the standard, we regard a new fact, to wit, the general...let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning 4 That impious maxim of the ancient philosophy, Ex nihilo, nihil fit, by which the creation of matter...

...had written nearly two hundred years earlier in An Enquiry Conceming Human Understanding (1748): lf we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school...Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry...

...excision of any body of knowledge that does not meet this stringent criterion of epistemic adequacy: "When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles,...If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or of school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning...

...had wntten nearly two hundred years earlier in An Enquiry Conceming Human Understanding i1 748i: lf we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school...let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning conceming quantity or number? No, Does it contain any expenmental reasoning conceming matters of fact...

...dramatic advice (section xii, Part IS): When we run over libraries, persuaded of these [positivistic] principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in...volume; of divinity or school metaphysics for instance [and we must add theoretical physics]; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning...

...Internal logic to support a statement. CM External, direct sense experience to verify the statement. If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does /'/ contain any abstract reasoning containing quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental...