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
The difficulty here encountered is chiefly that of figuring to ourselves
the two angles at the base of the triangle ABC as remainders made by
cutting one pair of angles out of another, while each pair shall be
corresponding angles of triangles which have two sides and the intervening
angle equal. It is by this happy contrivance that so many different
inductions are brought to bear upon the same particular case. And this not
being at all an obvious thought, it may be seen from an example so near
the threshold of mathematics, how much scope there may well be for
scientific dexterity in the higher branches of that and other sciences, in
order so to combine a few simple inductions, as to bring within each of
them innumerable cases which are not obviously included in it; and how
long, and numerous, and complicated may be the processes necessary for
bringing the inductions together, even when each induction may itself be
very easy and simple. All the inductions involved in all geometry are
comprised in those simple ones, the formulæ of which are the Axioms, and a
few of the so-called Definitions. The remainder of the science is made up
of the processes employed for bringing unforeseen cases within these
inductions; or (in syllogistic language) for proving the minors necessary
to complete the syllogisms; the majors being the definitions and axioms.
In those definitions and axioms are laid down the whole of the marks, by
an artful combination of which it has been found possible to discover and
prove all that is proved in geometry. The marks being so few, and the
inductions which furnish them being so obvious and familiar; the
connecting of several of them together, which constitutes Deductions, or
Trains of Reasoning, forms the whole difficulty of the science, and, with
a trifling exception, its whole bulk; and hence Geometry is a Deductive
Science.
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