I didn't know about Hume, and I was educated mostly in Scotland so thanks for that interesting article on Hume. I am really glad Scotland followed him up rapid fire with some great Engineers who showed how to build some great stuff by analysis of causes and effects. Maxwell, and Watt were both products of Scotland.
I agree we can never have certainty, but to make or do stuff that changes history in our practical experience, we just need to know how to analyse cause and effects, it seems to me, doing this comprehensively, say by modern formal methods of Systems Engineering removes doubt, those kinds of analysis eventually dictate solutions.
I always say if we can't find a solution we just haven't analysed the problem enough.
The global energy problem has to be our biggest problem in history.
To me it has a very clear physical solution, but I've been working on it six years and counting.
The work now is not so much analysing the physical issue, now it's stakeholder motivations and comprehension, those are way more challenging than the physical system.
Not fully analysing it is the biggest mistake we could ever make, and there seems a lot of folk resistant to understanding that.