easy to confuse them by mistaking examples of deduction for inductions.
Thus Whewell mistook Kepler's inference that Mars moves in an ellipse
for an induction, though it required the combination of Tycho's and
Kepler's observations, as a minor, with the laws of conic sections
discovered by the Greeks, as a major, premise. Jevons, in his
_Principles of Science_, constantly makes the same sort of mistake. For
example, the inference from the similarity between solar spectra and the
spectra of various gases on the earth to the existence of similar gases
in the sun, is called by him an induction; but it really is an
analytical deduction from effect to cause, thus:--
Such and such spectra are effects of various gases.
Solar spectra are such spectra.
:. Solar spectra are effects of those gases.
In the same way, to infer a machine from hearing the regular tick of a
clock, to infer a player from finding a pack of cards arranged in suits,
to infer a human origin of stone implements, and all such inferences
from patent effects to latent causes, though they appear to Jevons to be
typical inductions, are really deductions which, besides the minor
premise stating the particular effects, require a major premise
discovered by a previous induction and stating the general kind of
effects of a general kind of cause. B. Erdmann, again, has invented an
induction from particular predicates to a totality of predicates which
he calls "ergänzende Induction," giving as an example, "This body has
the colour, extensibility and specific gravity of magnesium; therefore
it is magnesium." But this inference contains the tacit major, "What has
a given colour, &c., is magnesium," and is a syllogism of recognition. A
deduction is often like an induction, in inferring from particulars; the
difference is that deduction combines a law in the major with the
particulars in the minor premise, and infers syllogistically that the
particulars of the minor have the predicate of the major premise,
whereas induction uses the particulars simply as instances to generalize
a law. An infallible sign of an induction is that the subject and
predicate of the universal conclusion are merely those of the particular
instances generalized; e.g. "These magnets attract iron, :. all do."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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