examined ten unanimous witnesses concerning the same event and have
completely demonstrated the status of the case, I ought, in examining
the last two witnesses, who are perhaps no longer needed but have been
summoned and appear, certainly to proceed in a rapid manner. This
justifiable neglect is then half unconsciously transferred to other
procedures where there is possible no equalization of the hypertrophy of
work in one direction with the dwarfing of it in another, and where the
mistake causes the result to be wrong. However I may have been bothered
by the multiplication of ten groups of factors and whatever accuracy I
may have applied to a task can not permit me to relax my attention in
the addition of the individual results. If I do I am likely to commit an
error and the error renders all the previous labor worthless.
Indeed, it may be asserted that all logic is futile where the premises
or a single premise may be wrong. I expect, in truth, that the
procedures here described will be doubted to be even possible, but
doubters are recommended to examine a few cases for the presence of this
sort of thing.
Section 27. (e) Analogy.
Analogy is the least negligible of all methods of induction because it
rests at bottom on the postulate that one thing which has a number of
qualities in common with another will agree with that other in one or
more _additional_ qualities. In cases of analogy, identity is never
asserted; indeed, it is excluded, while a certain parallelism and
agreement in specific points are assumed, i.e., introduced tacitly as a
mutatis mutandis. Consider Lipps’s examples. He calls analogy the
transfer of judgment or the transition from similar to similar, and he
adds that the value of such a process is very variable. If I have
perceived x times that flowers of a certain color have perfume, I am
inclined to expect perfume from flowers of the same color in x+1 cases.
If I have observed x times that clouds of a certain structure are
followed by rain I shall expect rain in the x+1st case. The first
analogy is worthless because there is no relation between color and
perfume; the second is of great value because such a relation does exist
between rain and clouds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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