The Foundational Document of Cognitive Science – Chapter by Tamás Demeter

David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature is arguably the best candidate for the first ever overarching attempt at a descriptive-explanatory science of the mind. This paper characterizes the key tenets of Hume’s undertaking and situates its central features in the context of then-contemporary science. According to the present argument, Hume’s science of man provides a chemical-organismic account of mental functioning that fits an intellectual environment dominated by post-Newtonian natural philosophy. 

Demeter, T. (2022b). The Foundational Document of Cognitive Science. In K. Kovács, G. Csibra, & J. Gervain (Eds.), A Life in Cognition (pp. 163–174). Springer International Publishing MTMT. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66175-5_11