Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic
John Stuart Mill · en
An experimental science may become deductive by the mere progress of
experiment. The mere connecting together of a few detached
generalisations, or even the discovery of a great generalisation working
only in a limited sphere, as, e.g. the doctrine of chemical equivalents,
does not make a science deductive as a whole; but a science is thus
transformed when some comprehensive induction is discovered connecting
hosts of formerly isolated inductions, as, e.g. when Newton showed that
the motions of all the bodies in the solar system (though each motion
had been separately inferred and from separate marks) are all marks of
one like movement. Sciences have become deductive usually through its
being shown, either by deduction or by direct experiment, that the
varieties of some phenomenon in them uniformly attend upon those of a
better known phenomenon, e.g. every variety of sound, on a distinct
variety of oscillatory motion. The science of number has been the grand
agent in thus making sciences deductive. The truths of numbers are,
indeed, affirmable of all things only in respect of their quantity; but
since the variations of _quality_ in various classes of phenomena have
(e.g. in mechanics and in astronomy) been found to correspond regularly
to variations of _quantity_ in the same or some other phenomena, every
mathematical formula applicable to quantities so varying becomes a mark
of a corresponding general truth respecting the accompanying variations
in quality; and as the science of quantity is, so far as a science can
be, quite deductive, the theory of that special kind of qualities
becomes so likewise. It was thus that Descartes and Clairaut made
geometry, which was already partially deductive, still more so, by
pointing out the correspondence between geometrical and algebraical
properties.
CHAPTERS V. AND VI.
DEMONSTRATION AND NECESSARY TRUTHS.