A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. I
John Stuart Mill · en
Old definitions, it is true, cannot prevail against new knowledge: and
if the Keplerian operation, as a logical process, be really identical
with what takes place in acknowledged induction, the definition of
induction ought to be so widened as to take it in; since scientific
language ought to adapt itself to the true relations which subsist
between the things it is employed to designate. Here then it is that I
am at issue with Dr. Whewell. He does think the operations identical. He
allows of no logical process in any case of induction, other than what
there was in Kepler's case, namely, guessing until a guess is found
which tallies with the facts; and accordingly, as we shall see
hereafter, he rejects all canons of induction, because it is not by
means of them that we guess. Dr. Whewell's theory of the logic of
science would be very perfect if it did not pass over altogether the
question of Proof. But in my apprehension there is such a thing as
proof, and inductions differ altogether from descriptions in their
relation to that element. Induction is proof; it is inferring something
unobserved from something observed: it requires, therefore, an
appropriate test of proof; and to provide that test, is the special
purpose of inductive logic. When, on the contrary, we merely collate
known observations, and, in Dr. Whewell's phraseology, connect them by
means of a new conception; if the conception does serve to connect the
observations, we have all we want. As the proposition in which it is
embodied pretends to no other truth than what it may share with many
other modes of representing the same facts, to be consistent with the
facts is all it requires: it neither needs nor admits of proof; though
it may serve to prove other things, inasmuch as, by placing the facts in
mental connexion with other facts, not previously seen to resemble them,
it assimilates the case to another class of phenomena, concerning which
real Inductions have already been made. Thus Kepler's so-called law
brought the orbit of Mars into the class ellipse, and by doing so,
proved all the properties of an ellipse to be true of the orbit: but in
this proof Kepler's law supplied the minor premise, and not (as is the
case with real Inductions) the major.