[2] This definition may be distinguished from the legal notion of testimony in that the speaker does not have to make a declaration of the truth of the facts.
For example, one may only know that Kent is a county of England or that David Beckham earns $30 million per year because one has learned these things from other people.
As Owens notes,[4] it does not seem to live up to the Enlightenment ideal of rationality captured in the motto of the Royal Society – ‘Nullius in verba (Into the word of no one)’.
Coady suggests that there are two approaches to this problem: and Hume is one of the few early philosophers to offer anything like a sustained account of testimony, this can be found in his ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’ in the section on miracles.
Perhaps also significant is that Bertrand Russell argued that knowledge by acquaintance played an important part in epistemology.