For instance, if we know that _each_ species of animal which is without
a gall is long-lived, we may make the induction that _all_ animals
without a gall are long-lived, but in doing so we have got no nearer to
seeing _why_ or _how_ the absence of a gall makes for longevity. The
question which we may raise in science may all be reduced to four heads,
(1) Does this thing exist? (2) Does this event occur? (3) If the thing
exists, precisely what is it? and (4) If the event occurs, _why_ does it
occur? and science has not completed its task unless it can advance from
the solution of the first two questions to that of the latter two.
Science is no mere catalogue of things and events, it consists of
inquiries into the "real essences" and characteristics of things and the
laws of connection between events.
Looking at scientific reasoning, then, from the point of view of its
formal character, we may say that all science consists in the search for
"middle terms" of syllogisms, by which to connect the truth which
appears as a conclusion with the less complex truths which appear as the
premisses from which it is drawn. When we ask, "does such a thing
exist?" or "does such an event happen?" we are asking, "is there a
middle term which can connect the thing or event in question with the
rest of known reality?" Since it is a rule of the syllogism that the
middle term must be taken universally, at least once in the premisses,
the search for middle terms may also be described as the search for
universals, and we may speak of science as knowledge of the universal
interconnections between facts and events.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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