A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
John Stuart Mill · en
In every way, therefore, it is evident that to explain induction as the
colligation of facts by means of appropriate conceptions, that is,
conceptions which will really express them, is to confound mere
description of the observed facts with inference from those facts, and
ascribe to the latter what is a characteristic property of the former.
There is, however, between Colligation and Induction, a real correlation,
which it is important to conceive correctly. Colligation is not always
induction; but induction is always colligation. The assertion that the
planets move in ellipses, was but a mode of representing observed facts;
it was but a colligation; while the assertion that they are drawn, or
tend, toward the sun, was the statement of a new fact, inferred by
induction. But the induction, once made, accomplishes the purposes of
colligation likewise. It brings the same facts, which Kepler had connected
by his conception of an ellipse, under the additional conception of bodies
acted upon by a central force, and serves, therefore, as a new bond of
connection for those facts; a new principle for their classification.
Further, the descriptions which are improperly confounded with induction,
are nevertheless a necessary preparation for induction; no less necessary
than correct observation of the facts themselves. Without the previous
colligation of detached observations by means of one general conception,
we could never have obtained any basis for an induction, except in the
case of phenomena of very limited compass. We should not be able to affirm
any predicates at all, of a subject incapable of being observed otherwise
than piecemeal: much less could we extend those predicates by induction to
other similar subjects. Induction, therefore, always presupposes, not only
that the necessary observations are made with the necessary accuracy, but
also that the results of these observations are, so far as practicable,
connected together by general descriptions, enabling the mind to represent
to itself as wholes whatever phenomena are capable of being so
represented.
§ 5. Dr. Whewell has replied at some length to the preceding observations,
restating his opinions, but without (as far as I can perceive) adding any
thing material to his former arguments. Since, however, mine have not had
the good fortune to make any impression upon him, I will subjoin a few
remarks, tending to show more clearly in what our difference of opinion
consists, as well as, in some measure, to account for it.
Nearly all the definitions of induction, by writers of authority, make it
consist in drawing inferences from known cases to unknown; affirming of a
class, a predicate which has been found true of some cases belonging to
the class; concluding because some things have a certain property, that
other things which resemble them have the same property—or because a thing
has manifested a property at a certain time, that it has and will have
that property at other times.