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
[181] *Outlines of Astronomy*, 4th ed. sect. 781, p. 522. *Results of
Observations at the Cape of Good Hope*, &c., p. 37.
To suppose, then, that quantitative science treats only of exactly
measurable quantities, is a gross if it be a common mistake. Whenever
we are treating of an event which either happens altogether or does
not happen at all, we are engaged with a non-quantitative phenomenon,
a matter of fact, not of degree; but whenever a thing may be greater
or less, or twice or thrice as great as another, whenever, in short,
ratio enters even in the rudest manner, there science will have a
quantitative character. There can be little doubt, indeed, that
every science as it progresses will become gradually more and more
quantitative. Numerical precision is the soul of science, as Herschel
said, and as all natural objects exist in space, and involve molecular
movements, measurable in velocity and extent, there is no apparent
limit to the ultimate extension of quantitative science. But the reader
must not for a moment suppose that, because we depend more and more
upon mathematical methods, we leave logical methods behind us. Number,
as I have endeavoured to show, is logical in its origin, and quantity
is but a development of number, or analogous thereto.
*Division of the Subject.*
The general subject of quantitative investigation will have to be
divided into several parts. We shall firstly consider the means at
our disposal for measuring phenomena, and thus rendering them more or
less amenable to mathematical treatment. This task will involve an
analysis of the principles on which accurate methods of measurement are
founded, forming the subject of the remainder of the present chapter.
As measurement, however, only yields ratios, we have in the next
chapter to consider the establishment of unit magnitudes, in terms of
which our results may be expressed. As every phenomenon is usually the
sum of several distinct quantities depending upon different causes,
we have next to investigate in Chapter XV. the methods by which we
may disentangle complicated effects, and refer each part of the joint
effect to its separate cause.
It yet remains for us in subsequent chapters to treat of quantitative
induction, properly so called. We must follow out the inverse logical
method, as it presents itself in problems of a far higher degree of
difficulty than those which treat of objects related in a simple
logical manner, and incapable of merging into each other by addition
and subtraction.
*Continuous Quantity.*
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