"Hume's Revolution"

The issue of rationality of science is discussed widely by scientists and philosophers in modern times. One of the main reasons of this problem arising is that humanism and historicism oppugn the traditional explanation of rationality of science. In their opinions, the base of rationality of science is not objective demonstration and logic but subjective "human nature". In fact, the origin of this idea can be tracked back to David Hume in England in the 18th century.That whether science is rational or not, had already risen as soon as modern science was established. Although many scientists such as Galileo and Newton studied the issue carefully, it wasn't resolved completely until those philosophers made a distinct answer finally. Philosophers attributed "the logical" and "the experiential" to the causation of rationality of science, but both of them was a rationalistic explanation in essence. Hume didn't express his satisfaction with it. He believed in the thorough principle of cognation, and alleged definitely that the real base of science was not rationality but custom and imagination. In other words, Hume raised a revolution of ideas in the history of western philosophy, and made a psychologism explanation of rationality of science.The psychologism explanation is manifested mainly in the following three aspects : causality,probability and existence of mind and things. In Hume's opinion, the existence of mind and things is the premise of science, and the causality is the internality principle of science, and the probability is the complement of causality. So, as Hume gives a psychologism explanation to causality,probability and the existence of mind and things, that means, he makes practically a psychologism explanation for science.Hume's revolution of ideas makes a far-reaching influence on the upcoming philosophy in the western, especially on Kant's philosophy of rationality of science and the psychologism in the 19th century; both were impressed obviously by Hume. And more important, his revolution has sparked directly the controversy about the rationality of science leaded by humanism and historicism in the 20th century yet.And furthermore, when we study Hume's revolution in question, we can actually comprehend and grasp Hume's philosophy again on the viewpoint of philosophy of science. After analyzed and understood carefully, it is known obviously to us that the meaning of Hume's philosophy is not absolute empirism in general as some people consider, because experience is only a basic springboard to him, and his real aim is psychologism as one kind of empirism. However, his psychologism isn't just like what N. Kemp. Smith consider, in Smith's opinion, Hume make a psychology explanation about the causality,the probability and existence of mind and things only . In fact, to Hume, those facts mentioned above can been only regarded as a kind of bridge or agency, his final destination is to establish a human science and make it as the base of the whole science. This new concept about Hume's philosophy may provide a new approach of the study of Hume's philosophy.