An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

⚖The case for it

Hume's candle and his dog are not illustrations, they are the proof: you expect the flame to burn because it always has, not because logic says so, and readers connect that straight to why modern machine learning abandoned rule-based systems for pattern-matching, one going so far as to say “Google would be interested in hiring him.” The section on miracles is what people reread, one saying they “ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT because of his amazing description of miracles,” and the closing line about committing to the flames any volume containing neither quantity nor experiment is the one they quote. He says what he means in plain sentences, which after Kant reads as its own argument for empiricism, and on the Hackett printing readers note “Steinberg's introduction was very good, which is unusual for Hackett series.” Start with this rather than the Treatise.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Even admirers flag a “seeming jump in logic in certain parts of some arguments,” the miracles section especially. The eighteenth-century punctuation is its own obstacle, semicolon-strung clauses readers say are “frequent and interrupting, causing me to lose my footing.” The tone toward religion reads as “super bitter and angry” rather than dispassionate. He tears positions down and stops, which leaves readers expecting a foundation with nothing to stand on. And the racist footnote elsewhere in his corpus sits badly beside the Enlightenment reputation, from a man “who was nonetheless a virulent racist.”

— the honest librarian

3h

honest hours

4

sittings