David Hume, along with
John Locke and
George Berkeley, is generally credited with starting the school of philosophy known as British Empiricism (or just
empiricism).
In contrast to early philosophers, particularly Rene Descartes, empiricists believe all knowledge is derived from sense data. They reject the class of ideas known as a priori (innate ideas) as pure rubbish. To a empiricist, people are born as tabula rasa, or clean slates without any knowledge. Only through the senses is information recorded, processed, and formed into new ideas.