In the body of his Inductive Logic, Mill gave a sufficient account of
the Method of Explanation as practised in scientific inquiry. It was
only his mode of approaching the subject that was confusing, and
made it appear as if the proper work of science were merely extending
observed generalities, as when we conclude that all men will die
because all men have died, or that all horned animals ruminate because
all hitherto observed have had this attribute. A minor source of
confusion incident to the same controversy was his refusing the
title of Induction proper to a mere summary of particulars. He seemed
thereby to cast a slight upon the mere summation of particulars. And
yet, according to his theory, it was those particulars that were the
basis of the Induction properly so called. That all men will die is an
inference from the observation summed up in the proposition that
all men have died. If we refuse the name of Induction to the general
proposition of fact, what are we to call it? The truth is that the
reason why the word Induction is applied indifferently to the general
proposition of fact and the general proposition applicable to all
time is that, once we are sure of the facts, the transition to the
inference is so simple an affair that it has not been found necessary
in practice to distinguish them by different names.
Our criticism of Mill would itself mislead if it were taken to mean
that the methods of science which he formulated are not the methods
of science or that his system of those methods is substantially
incomplete. His Inductive Logic as a system of scientific method was
a great achievement in organisation, a veritable _Novum Organum_ of
knowledge. What kept him substantially right was that the methods
which he systematised were taken from the practice of men of science.
Our criticism amounts only to this, that in correlating the new system
with the old he went upon a wrong track. For more than two centuries
Deduction had been opposed to Induction, the _ars disserendi_ to the
_ars inveniendi_. In trying to reconcile them and bring them under one
roof, Mill drew the bonds too tight. In stating the terms of the union
between the two partners, he did not separate their spheres of work
with sufficient distinctness.
Mill's theory of Deduction and Induction and the voluminous criticism
to which in its turn it has been subjected have undoubtedly been of
great service in clearing up the foundations of reasoning. But the
moral of it is that if we are to make the methods of Science a part of
Logic, and to name this department Induction, it is better to discard
altogether the questions of General and Particular which are pertinent
to Syllogism, and to recognise the new department simply as being
concerned with a different kind of inference, inference from facts to
what lies beyond them, inference from the observed to the unobserved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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