Whats David Humes (philosopher) Historical Context? 10 points for best answer

Question

Whats David Humes (philosopher) Historical Context? 10 points for best answer

Answer 1

You can find in book "From Socrates to Sartre : The Philosophic Quest" by T.Z. Lavine.  

Answer 2

Hume grew up in a time of technological advance in the British isles.

For example, in 1709, two years before his birth, Abraham Darby began using coke instead of charcoal to melt iron ore. This proved very efficient, and helped put England at the forefront of industrialization.

Thomas Newcomen began using steam engines to pump water out of coal mines beginning in 1712.  In 1769, James Watt would patent some crucial improvements to Newcomen's device, making possible steam-engine based transportation.

Although such developments may have inspired a sense of optimism in some of his contemporaries, I would argue that they inspired largely a sense of dread in Hume. He seems to have been driven largely by a fear that things were spinning out of control, and he was all his life quitre conservative about political/social questions, as he was in his reading of England's history, the subject of a six-volume study of his.