The principles of science : $b a treatise on logic and scientific methodJevons, William Stanley
Philosophy
The principles of science : $b a treatise on logic and scientific method
Jevons, William Stanley
Logic; Science -- Methodology
To a person who has once comprehended the extreme significance and
utility of the Logical Alphabet the indirect process of inference
becomes reduced to the repetition of a few uniform operations of
classification, selection, and elimination of contradictories. Logical
deduction, even in the most complicated questions, becomes a matter
of mere routine, and the amount of labour required is the only
impediment, when once the meaning of the premises is rendered clear.
But the amount of labour is often found to be considerable. The mere
writing down of sixty-four combinations of six letters each is no small
task, and, if we had a problem of five premises, each of the sixty-four
combinations would have to be examined in connection with each premise.
The requisite comparison is often of a very tedious character, and
considerable chance of error intervenes.
I have given much attention, therefore, to lessening both the manual
and mental labour of the process, and I shall describe several devices
which may be adopted for saving trouble and risk of mistake.
In the first place, as the same sets of combinations occur over and
over again in different problems, we may avoid the labour of writing
them out by having the sets of letters ready printed upon small sheets
of writing-paper. It has also been suggested by a correspondent that,
if any one series of combinations were marked upon the margin of a
sheet of paper, and a slit cut between each pair of combinations, it
would be easy to fold down any particular combination, and thus strike
it out of view. The combinations consistent with the premises would
then remain in a broken series. This method answers sufficiently well
for occasional use.
A more convenient mode, however, is to have the series of letters shown
on p. 94, engraved upon a common school writing slate, of such a size,
that the letters may occupy only about a third of the space on the
left hand side of the slate. The conditions of the problem can then be
written down on the unoccupied part of the slate, and the proper series
of combinations being chosen, the contradictory combinations can be
struck out with the pencil. I have used a slate of this kind, which I
call a *Logical Slate*, for more than twelve years, and it has saved me
much trouble. It is hardly possible to apply this process to problems
of more than six terms, owing to the large number of combinations which
would require examination.
*Abstraction of Indifferent Circumstances.*
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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