David Hume. Portrait of David Hume (1711-76), Scottish philosopher and historian who influenced the development of scepticism and empiricism. Hume rejected the idea of causality, claiming that one event would not necessarily lead to another; events were linked only by the imagination of the observer rather than by reason. In effect, Hume was rejecting scientific laws which state that one action necessarily produces another in a completely predictable manner. As a historian, Hume broke with tradition by explaining the intellectual and economic reasons behind events rather than just describing the events in a strictly chronological order. Portrait from 1744.