David Hume is considered one of the three great British empiricists, along with Hobbes and Locke, and lived towards the end of the Enlightenment. The Catholic Church was losing control over science, politics and philosophy, and the Aristotelian worldview was being swallowed up by a more mechanistic point of view. Galileo found the theory given by Copernicus correct, according to which our earth was not the center of everything, but celestial bodies, including the earth, surrounded the sun. Mathematicians abounded. Pascal developed the first mechanical calculator and Newtonian physics opened up new horizons. Not even the arts were immune. In the same era Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus. The main theme of this novel was the effects that science was having on humanity. The scientific revolution was well underway and destined to become the new religion. Hume attempted to strip the omnipotence of both divinity and reason and place it directly in human experience. Trying to secure something beyond our realm of natural human experience is an exercise in futility. We are trapped behind the wall of human sensory experience. Hume suggests that complex ideas arise from simple ideas and ideas arise from impressions. These impressions are obtained through perception. “Ideas produce images of themselves in new ideas; but as the first ideas are supposed to arise from impressions, it still remains true that all our simple ideas proceed, either mediately or immediately, from their corresponding impressions. Hume uses “mitigated scepticism” with surgical precision. Although this is the same methodology used by René Descartes to arrive at his famous statement "I think therefore I am", it is drastically different... middle of paper...—"Texts - Treatise on Human Nature (1739-40). " davidhume.org – Lyrics. http://davidhume.org/texts/thn.html. T2.3.3.4, SBN 414-415—"Texts - Inquiry into the Principles of Morals (1751, 1777)." davidhume.org - Lyrics. Access http://davidhume.org/texts/epm.html. M App2.8, SBN 300Reiner, Marley Reiner, Shea Grimm, Damsel Plum and Lainie Petersen. “National Meeting Records.” Bastard nation. Np, nd Web. 05 Apr 2014Velleman, J. David (2005). Family history. Philosophical Papers 34 (3):357-378Welfare Information Gateway. (2012). Access to adoption documents. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children's Bureau. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1958. http://gormendizer.co.za/wpcontent/uploads/2010/06/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf.