A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive — John Shaqi
A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and InductiveMill, John Stuart
PhilosophyPhilosophy
A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
Mill, John Stuart
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Science -- Methodology
It is in this sense that logic is, what it was so expressively called by
the schoolmen and by Bacon, _ars artium_; the science of science itself.
All science consists of data and conclusions from those data, of proofs
and what they prove: now logic points out what relations must subsist
between data and whatever can be concluded from them, between proof and
every thing which it can prove. If there be any such indispensable
relations, and if these can be precisely determined, every particular
branch of science, as well as every individual in the guidance of his
conduct, is bound to conform to those relations, under the penalty of
making false inferences—of drawing conclusions which are not grounded in
the realities of things. Whatever has at any time been concluded justly,
whatever knowledge has been acquired otherwise than by immediate
intuition, depended on the observance of the laws which it is the province
of logic to investigate. If the conclusions are just, and the knowledge
real, those laws, whether known or not, have been observed.
§ 6. We need not, therefore, seek any further for a solution of the
question, so often agitated, respecting the utility of logic. If a science
of logic exists, or is capable of existing, it must be useful. If there be
rules to which every mind consciously or unconsciously conforms in every
instance in which it infers rightly, there seems little necessity for
discussing whether a person is more likely to observe those rules, when he
knows the rules, than when he is unacquainted with them.
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