A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Vol. 1 of 2)
John Stuart Mill · en
§ 5. It will be seen hereafter 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, and 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.