Inductive Logic, as we now understand it--the Logic of Observation and
Explanation--was first formulated and articulated to a System of Logic
by J. S. Mill. It was he that added this wing to the old building.
But the need of it was clearly expressed as early as the thirteenth
century. Roger Bacon, the Franciscan friar (1214-1292), and not his
more illustrious namesake Francis, Lord Verulam, was the real founder
of Inductive Logic. It is remarkable that the same century saw
Syllogistic Logic advanced to its most complete development in the
system of Petrus Hispanus, a Portuguese scholar who under the title of
John XXI. filled the Papal Chair for eight months in 1276-7.
A casual remark of Roger Bacon's in the course of his advocacy of
Experimental Science in the _Opus Majus_ draws a clear line between
the two branches of Logic. "There are," he says, "two ways of knowing,
by Argument and by Experience. Argument concludes a question, but
it does not make us feel certain, unless the truth be also found in
experience."
On this basis the old Logic may be clearly distinguished from the new,
taking as the general aim of Logic the protection of the mind against
the errors to which it is liable in the acquisition of knowledge.
All knowledge, broadly speaking, comes either from Authority, _i.e._,
by argument from accepted premisses, or from Experience. If it comes
from Authority it comes through the medium of words: if it comes from
Experience it comes through the senses. In taking in knowledge through
words we are liable to certain errors; and in taking in knowledge
through the senses we are liable to certain errors. To protect against
the one is the main end of "Deductive" Logic: to protect against the
other is the main end of "Inductive" Logic. As a matter of fact the
pith of treatises on Deduction and Induction is directed to those ends
respectively, the old meanings of Deduction and Induction as formal
processes (to be explained afterwards) being virtually ignored.
There is thus no antagonism whatever between the two branches of
Logic. They are directed to different ends. The one is supplementary
to the other. The one cannot supersede the other.
Aristotelian Logic can never become superfluous as long as men are apt
to be led astray by words. Its ultimate business is to safeguard in
the interpretation of the tradition of language. The mere syllogistic,
the bare forms of equivalent or consistent expression, have a very
limited utility, as we shall see. But by cogent sequence syllogism
leads to proposition, and proposition to term, and term to a close
study of the relations between words and thoughts and things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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