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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
This book makes no pretence of giving to the world a new theory of the intellectual operations. Its claim to attention, if it possess any, is grounded on the fact that it is an attempt not to supersede, but to embody and systematize, the best ideas which have been either promulgated on its subject by speculative writers, or conformed to by accurate thinkers in their scientific inquiries. To cement together the detached fragments of a subject, never yet treated as a whole; to harmonize the true p
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CHAPTER XIV. OF THE LIMITS TO THE EXPLANATION OF LAWS OF NATURE; AND OF HYPOTHESES.
CHAPTER XIV. OF THE LIMITS TO THE EXPLANATION OF LAWS OF NATURE; AND OF HYPOTHESES.
§ 1. The preceding considerations have led us to recognise a distinction between two kinds of laws, or observed uniformities in nature: ultimate laws, and what may be termed derivative laws. Derivative laws are such as are deducible from, and may, in any of the modes which we have pointed out, be resolved into, other and more general ones. Ultimate laws are those which cannot. We are not sure that any of the uniformities with which we are yet acquainted are ultimate laws; but we know that there
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CHAPTER XV. OF PROGRESSIVE EFFECTS; AND OF THE CONTINUED ACTION OF CAUSES.
CHAPTER XV. OF PROGRESSIVE EFFECTS; AND OF THE CONTINUED ACTION OF CAUSES.
§ 1. In the last four chapters we have traced the general outlines of the theory of the generation of derivative laws from ultimate ones. In the present chapter our attention will be directed to a particular case of the derivation of laws from other laws, but a case so general, and so important, as not only to repay, but to require, a separate examination. This is, the case of a complex phenomenon resulting from one simple law, by the continual addition of an effect to itself. There are some phe
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CHAPTER I. OF THE NECESSITY OF COMMENCING WITH AN ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE.
CHAPTER I. OF THE NECESSITY OF COMMENCING WITH AN ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE.
§ 1. It is so much the established practice of writers on logic to commence their treatises by a few general observations (in most cases, it is true, rather meagre) on Terms and their varieties, that it will, perhaps, scarcely be required from me in merely following the common usage, to be as particular in assigning my reasons, as it is usually expected that those should be who deviate from it. The practice, indeed, is recommended by considerations far too obvious to require a formal justificati
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CHAPTER XVI. OF EMPIRICAL LAWS.
CHAPTER XVI. OF EMPIRICAL LAWS.
§ 1. Scientific inquirers give the name of Empirical Laws to those uniformities which observation or experiment has shown to exist, but on which they hesitate to rely in cases varying much from those which have been actually observed, for want of seeing any reason why such a law should exist. It is implied, therefore, in the notion of an empirical law, that it is not an ultimate law; that if true at all, its truth is capable of being, and requires to be, accounted for. It is a derivative law, th
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CHAPTER II. OF NAMES.
CHAPTER II. OF NAMES.
§ 1. "A name," says Hobbes, [1] "is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had before, and which being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what thought the speaker had [2] before in his mind." This simple definition of a name, as a word (or set of words) serving the double purpose of a mark to recall to ourselves the likeness of a former thought, and a sign to make it known to others, appears unexceptionable. Names, i
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CHAPTER III. OF THE THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES.
CHAPTER III. OF THE THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES.
§ 1. Looking back now to the commencement of our inquiry, let us attempt to measure how far it has advanced. Logic, we found, is the Theory of Proof. But proof supposes something provable, which must be a Proposition or Assertion; since nothing but a Proposition can be an object of belief, or therefore of proof. A Proposition is, discourse which affirms or denies something of some other thing. This is one step: there must, it seems, be two things concerned in every act of belief. But what are th
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CHAPTER XVII. OF CHANCE AND ITS ELIMINATION.
CHAPTER XVII. OF CHANCE AND ITS ELIMINATION.
§ 1. Considering then as empirical laws only those observed uniformities respecting which the question whether they are laws of causation must remain undecided until they can be explained deductively, or until some means are found of applying the Method of Difference to the case, it has been shown in the preceding chapter, that until an uniformity can, in one or the other of these modes, be taken out of the class of empirical laws, and brought either into that of laws of causation or of the demo
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CHAPTER XVIII. OF THE CALCULATION OF CHANCES.
CHAPTER XVIII. OF THE CALCULATION OF CHANCES.
§ 1. "Probability," says Laplace, [17] "has reference partly to our ignorance, partly to our knowledge. We know that among three or more events, one, and only one, must happen; but there is nothing leading us to believe that any one of them will happen rather than the others. In this state of indecision, it is impossible for us to pronounce with certainty on their occurrence. It is, however, probable that any one of these events, selected at pleasure, will not take place; because we perceive sev
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CHAPTER IV. OF PROPOSITIONS.
CHAPTER IV. OF PROPOSITIONS.
§ 1. In treating of Propositions, as already in treating of Names, some considerations of a comparatively elementary nature respecting their form and varieties must be premised, before entering upon that analysis of the import conveyed by them, which is the real subject and purpose of this preliminary book. A proposition, we have before said, is a portion of discourse in which a predicate is affirmed or denied of a subject. A predicate and a subject are all that is necessarily required to make u
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CHAPTER XIX. OF THE EXTENSION OF DERIVATIVE LAWS TO ADJACENT CASES.
CHAPTER XIX. OF THE EXTENSION OF DERIVATIVE LAWS TO ADJACENT CASES.
§ 1. We have had frequent occasion to notice the inferior generality of derivative laws, compared with the ultimate laws from which they are derived. This inferiority, which affects not only the extent of the propositions themselves, but their degree of certainty within that extent, is most conspicuous in the uniformities of coexistence and sequence obtaining between effects which depend ultimately on different primeval causes. Such uniformities will only obtain where there exists the same collo
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CHAPTER V. OF THE IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS.
CHAPTER V. OF THE IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS.
§ 1. An inquiry into the nature of propositions must have one of two objects: to analyse the state of mind called Belief, or to analyse what is believed. All language recognises a difference between a doctrine or opinion, and the fact of entertaining the opinion; between assent, and what is assented to. Logic, according to the conception here formed of it, has no concern with the nature of the act of judging or believing; the consideration of that act, as a phenomenon of the mind, belongs to ano
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CHAPTER XX. OF ANALOGY.
CHAPTER XX. OF ANALOGY.
§ 1. The word Analogy, as the name of a mode of reasoning, is generally taken for some kind of argument supposed to be of an inductive nature, but not amounting to a complete induction. There is no word, however, which is used more loosely, or in a greater variety of senses, than Analogy. It sometimes stands for arguments which may be examples of the most rigorous Induction. Archbishop Whately, for instance, following Ferguson and other writers, defines Analogy conformably to its primitive accep
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CHAPTER VI. OF PROPOSITIONS MERELY VERBAL.
CHAPTER VI. OF PROPOSITIONS MERELY VERBAL.
§ 1. As a preparation for the inquiry which is the proper object of Logic, namely, in what manner propositions are to be proved, we have found it necessary to inquire what they contain which requires, or is susceptible of, proof; or (which is the same thing) what they assert. In the course of this preliminary investigation into the import of Propositions, we examined the opinion of the Conceptualists, that a proposition is the expression of a relation between two ideas; and the doctrine of the N
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CHAPTER VII. OF THE NATURE OF CLASSIFICATION, AND THE FIVE PREDICABLES.
CHAPTER VII. OF THE NATURE OF CLASSIFICATION, AND THE FIVE PREDICABLES.
§ 1. In examining into the nature of general propositions, we have adverted much less than is usual with logicians to the ideas of a Class, and Classification; ideas which, since the Realist doctrine of General Substances went out of vogue, have formed the basis of almost every attempt at a philosophical theory of general terms and general propositions. We have considered general names as having a meaning, quite independently of their being the names of classes. That circumstance is in truth acc
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CHAPTER XXI. OF THE EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION.
CHAPTER XXI. OF THE EVIDENCE OF THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION.
§ 1. We have now completed our review of the logical processes by which the laws, or uniformities, of the sequence of phenomena, and those uniformities in their coexistence which depend on the laws of their sequence, are ascertained or tested. As we recognised in the commencement, and have been enabled to see more clearly in the progress of the investigation, the basis of all these logical operations is the law of causation. The validity of all the Inductive Methods depends on the assumption tha
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CHAPTER XXII. OF UNIFORMITIES OF COEXISTENCE NOT DEPENDENT ON CAUSATION.
CHAPTER XXII. OF UNIFORMITIES OF COEXISTENCE NOT DEPENDENT ON CAUSATION.
§ 1. The order of the occurrence of phenomena in time, is either successive or simultaneous; the uniformities, therefore, which obtain in their occurrence, are either uniformities of succession or of coexistence. Uniformities of succession are all comprehended under the law of causation and its consequences. Every phenomenon has a cause, which it invariably follows; and from this are derived other invariable sequences among the successive stages of the same effect, as well as between the effects
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CHAPTER VIII. OF DEFINITION.
CHAPTER VIII. OF DEFINITION.
§ 1. One necessary part of the theory of Names and of Propositions remains to be treated of in this place: the theory of Definitions. As being the most important of the class of propositions which we have characterized as purely verbal, they have already received some notice in the chapter preceding the last. But their fuller treatment was at that time postponed, because definition is so closely connected with classification, that, until the nature of the latter process is in some measure unders
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CHAPTER XXIII. OF APPROXIMATE GENERALIZATIONS, AND PROBABLE EVIDENCE.
CHAPTER XXIII. OF APPROXIMATE GENERALIZATIONS, AND PROBABLE EVIDENCE.
§ 1. In our inquiries into the nature of the inductive process, we must not confine our notice to such generalizations from experience as profess to be universally true. There is a class of inductive truths avowedly not universal; in which it is not pretended that the predicate is always true of the subject; but the value of which, as generalizations, is nevertheless extremely great. An important portion of the field of inductive knowledge does not consist of universal truths, but of approximati
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CHAPTER I. OF INFERENCE, OR REASONING, IN GENERAL.
CHAPTER I. OF INFERENCE, OR REASONING, IN GENERAL.
§ 1. In the preceding Book, we have been occupied not with the nature of Proof, but with the nature of Assertion: the import conveyed by a Proposition, whether that Proposition be true or false; not the means by which to discriminate true from false Propositions. The proper subject, however, of Logic is Proof. Before we could understand what Proof is, it was necessary to understand what that is to which proof is applicable; what that is which can be a subject of belief or disbelief, of affirmati
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CHAPTER XXIV. OF THE REMAINING LAWS OF NATURE.
CHAPTER XXIV. OF THE REMAINING LAWS OF NATURE.
§ 1. In the First Book, we found that all the assertions which can be conveyed by language, express some one or more of five different things: Existence; Order in Place; Order in Time; Causation; and Resemblance. [36] Of these, Causation, in our view of the subject, not being fundamentally different from Order in Time, the five species of possible assertions are reduced to four. The propositions which affirm Order in Time, in either of its two modes, Coexistence and Succession, have formed, thus
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CHAPTER II. OF RATIOCINATION, OR SYLLOGISM.
CHAPTER II. OF RATIOCINATION, OR SYLLOGISM.
§ 1. The analysis of the Syllogism has been so accurately and fully performed in the common manuals of Logic, that in the present work, which is not designed as a manual, it is sufficient to recapitulate, memoriæ causâ , the leading results of that analysis, as a foundation for the remarks to be afterwards made on the functions of the syllogism, and the place which it holds in science. To a legitimate syllogism it is essential that there should be three, and no more than three, propositions, nam
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CHAPTER III. OF THE FUNCTIONS AND LOGICAL VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM.
CHAPTER III. OF THE FUNCTIONS AND LOGICAL VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM.
§ 1. We have shown what is the real nature of the truths with which the Syllogism is conversant, in contradistinction to the more superficial manner in which their import is conceived in the common theory; and what are the fundamental axioms on which its probative force or conclusiveness depends. We have now to inquire, whether the syllogistic process, that of reasoning from generals to particulars, is, or is not, a process of inference; a progress from the known to the unknown: a means of comin
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CHAPTER XXV. OF THE GROUNDS OF DISBELIEF.
CHAPTER XXV. OF THE GROUNDS OF DISBELIEF.
§ 1. The method of arriving at general truths, or general propositions fit to be believed, and the nature of the evidence on which they are grounded, have been discussed, as far as space and the writer's faculties permitted, in the twenty-four preceding chapters. But the result of the examination of evidence is not always belief, nor even suspension of judgment; it is sometimes disbelief. The philosophy, therefore, of induction and experimental inquiry is incomplete, unless the grounds not only
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CHAPTER IV. OF TRAINS OF REASONING, AND DEDUCTIVE SCIENCES.
CHAPTER IV. OF TRAINS OF REASONING, AND DEDUCTIVE SCIENCES.
§ 1. In our analysis of the syllogism, it appeared that the minor premise always affirms a resemblance between a new case and some cases previously known; while the major premise asserts something which, having been found true of those known cases, we consider ourselves warranted in holding true of any other case resembling the former in certain given particulars. If all ratiocinations resembled, as to the minor premise, the examples which were exclusively employed in the preceding chapter; if t
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CHAPTER I. OF OBSERVATION AND DESCRIPTION.
CHAPTER I. OF OBSERVATION AND DESCRIPTION.
§ 1. The inquiry which occupied us in the two preceding books, has conducted us to what appears a satisfactory solution of the principal problem of Logic, according to the conception I have formed of the science. We have found, that the mental process with which Logic is conversant, the operation of ascertaining truths by means of evidence, is always, even when appearances point to a different theory of it, a process of induction. And we have particularized the various modes of induction, and ob
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CHAPTER V. OF DEMONSTRATION, AND NECESSARY TRUTHS.
CHAPTER V. OF DEMONSTRATION, AND NECESSARY TRUTHS.
§ 1. If, as laid down in the two preceding chapters, the foundation of all sciences, even deductive or demonstrative sciences, is Induction; if every step in the ratiocinations even of geometry is an act of induction; and if a train of reasoning is but bringing many inductions to bear upon the same subject of inquiry, and drawing a case within one induction by means of another; wherein lies the peculiar certainty always ascribed to the sciences which are entirely, or almost entirely, deductive?
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CHAPTER II. OF ABSTRACTION, OR THE FORMATION OF CONCEPTIONS.
CHAPTER II. OF ABSTRACTION, OR THE FORMATION OF CONCEPTIONS.
§ 1. The metaphysical inquiry into the nature and composition of what have been called Abstract Ideas, or in other words, of the notions which answer in the mind to classes and to general names, belongs not to Logic, but to a different science, and our purpose does not require that we should enter upon it here. We are only concerned with the universally acknowledged fact, that such notions or conceptions do exist. The mind can conceive a multitude of individual things as one assemblage or class;
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CHAPTER VI. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.
CHAPTER VI. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.
§ 1. In the examination which formed the subject of the last chapter, into the nature of the evidence of those deductive sciences which are commonly represented to be systems of necessary truth, we have been led to the following conclusions. The results of those sciences are indeed necessary, in the sense of necessarily following from certain first principles, commonly called axioms and definitions; that is, of being certainly true if those axioms and definitions are so; for the word necessity,
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CHAPTER III. OF NAMING, AS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION.
CHAPTER III. OF NAMING, AS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION.
§ 1. It does not belong to the present undertaking to dwell on the importance of language as a medium of human intercourse, whether for purposes of sympathy or of information. Nor does our design admit of more than a passing allusion to that great property of names, on which their functions as an intellectual instrument are, in reality, ultimately dependent; their potency as a means of forming, and of riveting, associations among our other ideas: a subject on which an able thinker [5] has thus w
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CHAPTER VII. EXAMINATION OF SOME OPINIONS OPPOSED TO THE PRECEDING DOCTRINES.
CHAPTER VII. EXAMINATION OF SOME OPINIONS OPPOSED TO THE PRECEDING DOCTRINES.
§ 1. Polemical discussion is foreign to the plan of this work. But an opinion which stands in need of much illustration, can often receive it most effectually, and least tediously, in the form of a defence against objections. And on subjects concerning which speculative minds are still divided, a writer does but half his duty by stating his own doctrine, if he does not also examine, and to the best of his ability judge, those of other thinkers. In the dissertation which Mr. Herbert Spencer has p
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CHAPTER IV. OF THE REQUISITES OF A PHILOSOPHICAL LANGUAGE, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF DEFINITION.
CHAPTER IV. OF THE REQUISITES OF A PHILOSOPHICAL LANGUAGE, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF DEFINITION.
§ 1. In order that we may possess a language perfectly suitable for the investigation and expression of general truths, there are two principal, and several minor, requisites. The first is, that every general name should have a meaning, steadily fixed, and precisely determined. When, by the fulfilment of this condition, such names as we possess are fitted for the due performance of their functions, the next requisite, and the second in order of importance, is that we should possess a name wherev
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CHAPTER V. ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE VARIATIONS IN THE MEANING OF TERMS.
CHAPTER V. ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE VARIATIONS IN THE MEANING OF TERMS.
§ 1. It is not only in the mode which has now been pointed out, namely by gradual inattention to a portion of the ideas conveyed, that words in common use are liable to shift their connotation. The truth is, that the connotation of such words is perpetually varying; as might be expected from the manner in which words in common use acquire their connotation. A technical term, invented for purposes of art or science, has, from the first, the connotation given to it by its inventor; but a name whic
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CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON INDUCTION IN GENERAL.
CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON INDUCTION IN GENERAL.
§ 1. The portion of the present inquiry upon which we are now about to enter, may be considered as the principal, both from its surpassing in intricacy all the other branches, and because it relates to a process which has been shown in the preceding Book to be that in which the investigation of nature essentially consists. We have found that all Inference, consequently all Proof, and all discovery of truths not self-evident, consists of inductions, and the interpretation of inductions: that all
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CHAPTER VI. THE PRINCIPLES OF A PHILOSOPHICAL LANGUAGE FURTHER CONSIDERED.
CHAPTER VI. THE PRINCIPLES OF A PHILOSOPHICAL LANGUAGE FURTHER CONSIDERED.
§ 1. We have, thus far, considered only one of the requisites of a language adapted for the investigation of truth; that its terms shall each of them convey a determinate and unmistakeable meaning. There are, however, as we have already remarked, other requisites; some of them important only in the second degree, but one which is fundamental, and barely yields in point of importance, if it yields at all, to the quality which we have already discussed at so much length. That the language may be f
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CHAPTER II. OF INDUCTIONS IMPROPERLY SO CALLED.
CHAPTER II. OF INDUCTIONS IMPROPERLY SO CALLED.
§ 1. Induction, then, is that operation of the mind, by which we infer that what we know to be true in a particular case or cases, will be true in all cases which resemble the former in certain assignable respects. In other words, Induction is the process by which we conclude that what is true of certain individuals of a class is true of the whole class, or that what is true at certain times will be true in similar circumstances at all times. This definition excludes from the meaning of the term
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CHAPTER VII. OF CLASSIFICATION, AS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION.
CHAPTER VII. OF CLASSIFICATION, AS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION.
§ 1. There is, as has been frequently remarked in this work, a classification of things, which is inseparable from the fact of giving them general names. Every name which connotes an attribute, divides, by that very fact, all things whatever into two classes, those which have the attribute and those which have it not; those of which the name can be predicated, and those of which it cannot. And the division thus made is not merely a division of such things as actually exist, or are known to exist
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CHAPTER III. OF THE GROUND OF INDUCTION.
CHAPTER III. OF THE GROUND OF INDUCTION.
§ 1. Induction properly so called, as distinguished from those mental operations, sometimes though improperly designated by the name, which I have attempted in the preceding chapter to characterize, may, then, be summarily defined as Generalization from Experience. It consists in inferring from some individual instances in which a phenomenon is observed to occur, that it occurs in all instances of a certain class; namely, in all which resemble the former, in what are regarded as the material cir
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CHAPTER VIII. OF CLASSIFICATION BY SERIES.
CHAPTER VIII. OF CLASSIFICATION BY SERIES.
§ 1. Thus far, we have considered the principles of scientific classification so far only as relates to the formation of natural groups; and at this point most of those who have attempted a theory of natural arrangement, including, among the rest, Dr. Whewell, have stopped. There remains, however, another, and a not less important portion of the theory, which has not yet, as far as I am aware, been systematically treated of by any writer except M. Comte. This is, the arrangement of the natural g
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CHAPTER IV. OF LAWS OF NATURE.
CHAPTER IV. OF LAWS OF NATURE.
§ 1. In the contemplation of that uniformity in the course of nature, which is assumed in every inference from experience, one of the first observations that present themselves is, that the uniformity in question is not properly uniformity, but uniformities. The general regularity results from the coexistence of partial regularities. The course of nature in general is constant, because the course of each of the various phenomena that compose it is so. A certain fact invariably occurs whenever ce
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CHAPTER I. OF FALLACIES IN GENERAL.
CHAPTER I. OF FALLACIES IN GENERAL.
§ 1. It is a maxim of the schoolmen, that "contrariorum eadem est scientia:" we never really know what a thing is, unless we are also able to give a sufficient account of its opposite. Conformably to this maxim, one considerable section, in most treatises on Logic, is devoted to the subject of Fallacies; and the practice is too well worthy of observance, to allow of our departing from it. The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasonin
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CHAPTER V. OF THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION.
CHAPTER V. OF THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION.
§ 1. The phenomena of nature exist in two distinct relations to one another; that of simultaneity, and that of succession. Every phenomenon is related, in an uniform manner, to some phenomena that coexist with it, and to some that have preceded and will follow it. Of the uniformities which exist among synchronous phenomena, the most important, on every account, are the laws of number; and next to them those of space, or, in other words, of extension and figure. The laws of number are common to s
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CHAPTER II. CLASSIFICATION OF FALLACIES.
CHAPTER II. CLASSIFICATION OF FALLACIES.
§ 1. In attempting to establish certain general distinctions which shall mark out from one another the various kinds of Fallacious Evidence, we propose to ourselves an altogether different aim from that of several eminent thinkers, who have given, under the name of Political or other Fallacies, a mere enumeration of a certain number of erroneous opinions; false general propositions which happen to be often met with; loci communes of bad arguments on some particular subject. Logic is not concerne
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CHAPTER VI. ON THE COMPOSITION OF CAUSES.
CHAPTER VI. ON THE COMPOSITION OF CAUSES.
§ 1. To complete the general notion of causation on which the rules of experimental inquiry into the laws of nature must be founded, one distinction still remains to be pointed out: a distinction so radical, and of so much importance, as to require a chapter to itself. The preceding discussions have rendered us familiar with the case in which several agents, or causes, concur as conditions to the production of an effect: a case, in truth, almost universal, there being very few effects to the pro
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CHAPTER III. FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION; OR À PRIORI FALLACIES.
CHAPTER III. FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION; OR À PRIORI FALLACIES.
§ 1. The tribe of errors of which we are to treat in the first instance, are those in which no actual inference takes place at all: the proposition (it cannot in such cases be called a conclusion) being embraced, not as proved, but as requiring no proof; as a self-evident truth; or else as having such intrinsic verisimilitude, that external evidence not in itself amounting to proof, is sufficient in aid of the antecedent presumption. An attempt to treat this subject comprehensively would be a tr
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CHAPTER VII. OF OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENT.
CHAPTER VII. OF OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENT.
§ 1. It results from the preceding exposition, that the process of ascertaining what consequents, in nature, are invariably connected with what antecedents, or in other words what phenomena are related to each other as causes and effects, is in some sort a process of analysis. That every fact which begins to exist has a cause, and that this cause must be found somewhere among the facts which immediately preceded the occurrence, may be taken for certain. The whole of the present facts are the inf
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CHAPTER IV. FALLACIES OF OBSERVATION.
CHAPTER IV. FALLACIES OF OBSERVATION.
§ 1. From the fallacies which are properly Prejudices, or presumptions antecedent to, and superseding, proof, we pass to those which lie in the incorrect performance of the proving process. And as Proof, in its widest extent, embraces one or more, or all, of three processes, Observation, Generalization, and Deduction; we shall consider in their order the errors capable of being committed in these three operations. And first, of the first mentioned. A fallacy of misobservation may be either negat
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CHAPTER VIII. OF THE FOUR METHODS OF EXPERIMENTAL INQUIRY.
CHAPTER VIII. OF THE FOUR METHODS OF EXPERIMENTAL INQUIRY.
§ 1. The simplest and most obvious modes of singling out from among the circumstances which precede or follow a phenomenon, those with which it is really connected by an invariable law, are two in number. One is, by comparing together different instances in which the phenomenon occurs. The other is, by comparing instances in which the phenomenon does occur, with instances in other respects similar in which it does not. These two methods may be respectively denominated, the Method of Agreement, a
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CHAPTER IX. MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES OF THE FOUR METHODS.
CHAPTER IX. MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES OF THE FOUR METHODS.
§ 1. I shall select, as a first example, an interesting speculation of one of the most eminent of theoretical chemists, Baron Liebig. The object in view, is to ascertain the immediate cause of the death produced by metallic poisons. Arsenious acid, and the salts of lead, bismuth, copper, and mercury, if introduced into the animal organism, except in the smallest doses, destroy life. These facts have long been known, as insulated truths of the lowest order of generalization; but it was reserved f
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CHAPTER V. FALLACIES OF GENERALIZATION.
CHAPTER V. FALLACIES OF GENERALIZATION.
§ 1. The class of Fallacies of which we are now to speak, is the most extensive of all; embracing a greater number and variety of unfounded inferences than any of the other classes, and which it is even more difficult to reduce to sub-classes or species. If the attempt made in the preceding books to define the principles of well-grounded generalization has been successful, all generalizations not conformable to those principles might, in a certain sense, be brought under the present class: when
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CHAPTER VI. FALLACIES OF RATIOCINATION.
CHAPTER VI. FALLACIES OF RATIOCINATION.
§ 1. We have now, in our progress through the classes of Fallacies, arrived at those to which, in the common books of logic, the appellation is in general exclusively appropriated; those which have their seat in the ratiocinative or deductive part of the investigation of truth. On these fallacies it is the less necessary for us to insist at any length, as they have been most satisfactorily treated in a work familiar to almost all, in this country at least, who feel any interest in these speculat
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CHAPTER X. OF PLURALITY OF CAUSES; AND OF THE INTERMIXTURE OF EFFECTS.
CHAPTER X. OF PLURALITY OF CAUSES; AND OF THE INTERMIXTURE OF EFFECTS.
§ 1. In the preceding exposition of the four methods of observation and experiment, by which we contrive to distinguish among a mass of coexistent phenomena the particular effect due to a given cause, or the particular cause which gave birth to a given effect; it has been necessary to suppose, in the first instance, for the sake of simplification, that this analytical operation is encumbered by no other difficulties than what are essentially inherent in its nature; and to represent to ourselves,
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CHAPTER VII. FALLACIES OF CONFUSION.
CHAPTER VII. FALLACIES OF CONFUSION.
§ 1. Under this fifth and last class it is convenient to arrange all those fallacies, in which the source of error is not so much a false estimate of the probative force of known evidence, as an indistinct, indefinite, and fluctuating conception of what the evidence is. At the head of these stands that multitudinous body of fallacious reasonings, in which the source of error is the ambiguity of terms: when something which is true if a word be used in a particular sense, is reasoned on as if it w
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CHAPTER XI. OF THE DEDUCTIVE METHOD.
CHAPTER XI. OF THE DEDUCTIVE METHOD.
§ 1. The mode of investigation which, from the proved inapplicability of direct methods of observation and experiment, remains to us as the main source of the knowledge we possess or can acquire respecting the conditions, and laws of recurrence, of the more complex phenomena, is called, in its most general expression, the Deductive Method; and consists of three operations: the first, one of direct induction; the second, of ratiocination; the third, of verification. I call the first step in the p
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CHAPTER XII. OF THE EXPLANATION OF LAWS OF NATURE.
CHAPTER XII. OF THE EXPLANATION OF LAWS OF NATURE.
§ 1. The deductive operation by which we derive the law of an effect from the laws of the causes, the concurrence of which gives rise to it, may be undertaken either for the purpose of discovering the law, or of explaining a law already discovered. The word explanation occurs so continually and holds so important a place in philosophy, that a little time spent in fixing the meaning of it will be profitably employed. An individual fact is said to be explained, by pointing out its cause, that is,
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BOOK VI. ON THE LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES.
BOOK VI. ON THE LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES.
"Si l'homme peut prédire, avec une assurance presque entière, les phénomènes dont il connaît les lois; si lors même qu'elles lui sont inconnues, il peut, d'après l'expérience, prévoir avec une grande probabilité les événemens de l'avenir; pourquoi regarderait-on comme une entreprise chimérique, celle de tracer avec quelque vraisemblance le tableau des destinées futures de l'espèce humaine, d'après les résultats de son histoire? Le seul fondement de croyance dans les sciences naturelles, est cett
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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
§ 1. Principles of Evidence and Theories of Method are not to be constructed à priori . The laws of our rational faculty, like those of every other natural agency, are only learnt by seeing the agent at work. The earlier achievements of science were made without the conscious observance of any Scientific Method; and we should never have known by what process truth is to be ascertained, if we had not previously ascertained many truths. But it was only the easier problems which could be thus resol
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CHAPTER XIII. MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES OF THE EXPLANATION OF LAWS OF NATURE.
CHAPTER XIII. MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES OF THE EXPLANATION OF LAWS OF NATURE.
§ 1. The most striking example which the history of science presents, of the explanation of laws of causation and other uniformities of sequence among special phenomena, by resolving them into laws of greater simplicity and generality, is the great Newtonian generalization: respecting which typical instance so much having already been said, it is sufficient to call attention to the great number and variety of the special observed uniformities which are in this case accounted for, either as parti
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CHAPTER II. OF LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.
CHAPTER II. OF LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.
§ 1. The question, whether the law of causality applies in the same strict sense to human actions as to other phenomena, is the celebrated controversy concerning the freedom of the will: which, from at least as far back as the time of Pelagius, has divided both the philosophical and the religious world. The affirmative opinion is commonly called the doctrine of Necessity, as asserting human volitions and actions to be necessary and inevitable. The negative maintains that the will is not determin
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CHAPTER III. THAT THERE IS, OR MAY BE, A SCIENCE OF HUMAN NATURE.
CHAPTER III. THAT THERE IS, OR MAY BE, A SCIENCE OF HUMAN NATURE.
§ 1. It is a common notion, or at least it is implied in many common modes of speech, that the thoughts, feelings, and actions of sentient beings are not a subject of science, in the same strict sense in which this is true of the objects of outward nature. This notion seems to involve some confusion of ideas, which it is necessary to begin by clearing up. Any facts are fitted, in themselves, to be a subject of science, which follow one another according to constant laws; although those laws may
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CHAPTER IV. OF THE LAWS OF MIND.
CHAPTER IV. OF THE LAWS OF MIND.
§ 1. What the Mind is, as well as what Matter is, or any other question respecting Things in themselves, as distinguished from their sensible manifestations, it would be foreign to the purposes of this treatise to consider. Here, as throughout our inquiry, we shall keep clear of all speculations respecting the mind's own nature, and shall understand by the laws of mind, those of mental Phenomena; of the various feelings or states of consciousness of sentient beings. These, according to the class
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CHAPTER V. OF ETHOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER.
CHAPTER V. OF ETHOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER.
§ 1. The laws of mind as characterized in the preceding chapter, compose the universal or abstract portion of the philosophy of human nature; and all the truths of common experience, constituting a practical knowledge of mankind, must, to the extent to which they are truths, be results or consequences of these. Such familiar maxims, when collected à posteriori from observation of life, occupy among the truths of the science the place of what, in our analysis of Induction, have so often been spok
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CHAPTER VI. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.
CHAPTER VI. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.
§ 1. Next after the science of individual man, comes the science of man in society: of the actions of collective masses of mankind, and the various phenomena which constitute social life. If the formation of individual character is already a complex subject of study, this subject must be, in appearance at least, still more complex; because the number of concurrent causes, all exercising more or less influence on the total effect, is greater, in the proportion in which a nation, or the species at
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CHAPTER VII. OF THE CHEMICAL, OR EXPERIMENTAL, METHOD IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.
CHAPTER VII. OF THE CHEMICAL, OR EXPERIMENTAL, METHOD IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.
§ 1. The laws of the phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing but the laws of the actions and passions of human beings united together in the social state. Men, however, in a state of society, are still men; their actions and passions are obedient to the laws of individual human nature. Men are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of substance, with different properties; as hydrogen and oxygen are different from water, or as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and azote, are differ
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CHAPTER VIII. OF THE GEOMETRICAL, OR ABSTRACT METHOD.
CHAPTER VIII. OF THE GEOMETRICAL, OR ABSTRACT METHOD.
§ 1. The misconception discussed in the preceding chapter is, as we said, chiefly committed by persons not much accustomed to scientific investigation: practitioners in politics, who rather employ the commonplaces of philosophy to justify their practice, than seek to guide their practice by philosophic principles: or imperfectly educated persons, who, in ignorance of the careful selection and elaborate comparison of instances required for the formation of a sound theory, attempt to found one upo
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CHAPTER IX. OF THE PHYSICAL, OR CONCRETE DEDUCTIVE METHOD.
CHAPTER IX. OF THE PHYSICAL, OR CONCRETE DEDUCTIVE METHOD.
§ 1. After what has been said to illustrate the nature of the inquiry into social phenomena, the general character of the method proper to that inquiry is sufficiently evident, and needs only to be recapitulated, not proved. However complex the phenomena, all their sequences and coexistences result from the laws of the separate elements. The effect produced, in social phenomena, by any complex set of circumstances, amounts precisely to the sum of the effects of the circumstances taken singly: an
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CHAPTER X. OF THE INVERSE DEDUCTIVE, OR HISTORICAL METHOD.
CHAPTER X. OF THE INVERSE DEDUCTIVE, OR HISTORICAL METHOD.
§ 1. There are two kinds of sociological inquiry. In the first kind, the question proposed is, what effect will follow from a given cause, a certain general condition of social circumstances being presupposed. As, for example, what would be the effect of imposing or of repealing corn laws, of abolishing monarchy or introducing universal suffrage, in the present condition of society and civilization in any European country, or under any other given supposition with regard to the circumstances of
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CHAPTER XI. ADDITIONAL ELUCIDATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY.
CHAPTER XI. ADDITIONAL ELUCIDATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY.
§ 1. The doctrine which the preceding chapters were intended to enforce and elucidate—that the collective series of social phenomena, in other words the course of history, is subject to general laws, which philosophy may possibly detect—has been familiar for generations to the scientific thinkers of the Continent, and has for the last quarter of a century passed out of their peculiar domain, into that of newspapers and ordinary political discussion. In our own country, however, at the time of th
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CHAPTER XII. OF THE LOGIC OF PRACTICE, OR ART; INCLUDING MORALITY AND POLICY.
CHAPTER XII. OF THE LOGIC OF PRACTICE, OR ART; INCLUDING MORALITY AND POLICY.
§ 1. In the preceding chapters we have endeavoured to characterize the present state of those among the branches of knowledge called Moral, which are sciences in the only proper sense of the term, that is, inquiries into the course of nature. It is customary, however, to include under the term moral knowledge, and even (though improperly) under that of moral science, an inquiry the results of which do not express themselves in the indicative, but in the imperative mood, or in periphrases equival
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