A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. I — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. I
John Stuart Mill · en
§ 5. It will be seen hereafter[18] that there are weighty scientific
reasons for giving to every science as much of the character of a
Deductive Science as possible; for endeavouring to construct the science
from the fewest and the simplest possible inductions, and to make these,
by any combinations however complicated, suffice for proving even such
truths, relating to complex cases, as could be proved, if we chose, by
inductions from specific experience. Every branch of natural philosophy
was originally experimental; each generalization rested on a special
induction, and was derived from its own distinct set of observations and
experiments. From being sciences of pure experiment, as the phrase is,
or, to speak more correctly, sciences in which the reasonings mostly
consist of no more than one step, and are expressed by single
syllogisms, all these sciences have become to some extent, and some of
them in nearly the whole of their extent, sciences of pure reasoning;
whereby multitudes of truths, already known by induction from as many
different sets of experiments, have come to be exhibited as deductions
or corollaries from inductive propositions of a simpler and more
universal character. Thus mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, acoustics,
thermology, have successively been rendered mathematical; and astronomy
was brought by Newton within the laws of general mechanics. Why it is
that the substitution of this circuitous mode of proceeding for a
process apparently much easier and more natural, is held, and justly, to
be the greatest triumph of the investigation of nature, we are not, in
this stage of our inquiry, prepared to examine. But it is necessary to
remark, that although, by this progressive transformation, all sciences
tend to become more and more Deductive, they are not, therefore, the
less Inductive; every step in the Deduction is still an Induction. The
opposition is not between the terms Deductive and Inductive, but between
Deductive and Experimental. A science is experimental, in proportion as
every new case, which presents any peculiar features, stands in need of
a new set of observations and experiments--a fresh induction. It is
deductive, in proportion as it can draw conclusions, respecting cases of
a new kind, by processes which bring those cases under old inductions;
by ascertaining that cases which cannot be observed to have the
requisite marks, have, however, marks of those marks.