Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ...or not, it is evident that our present standpoint does not permit us to regard induction and deduction as separate forms of thinking. They are at most distinguishable aspects of a process that presents the same general features everywhere. That a reinterpretation is necessary appears further if we look closely into the customary definitions of induction and deduction. According to the prevailing definitions, induction proceeds from particular facts to a general law or principle, while deduction proceeds from general principles to particular facts. To begin with induction, the dictum, from the particular to the general, appears to leave out many cases that would ordinarily be classed as induction. Thus the proof that A killed B, or that the valley of the Mississippi was once an inland sea, is induction, even though what is proved is a particular fact. The proof undoubtedly involves various generalizations or laws, but these enter into the situation only for the sake of establishing something that is not a principle or law. Similarly deduction does not necessarily consist in application of a principle to a particular fact. Thackeray's story of the priest is a case in point. "An old abb6, talking among a party of intimate friends, happened to say, 'A priest has strange experiences: why, ladies, my first penitent was a murderer!' Upon this, the principal nobleman of the neighborhood enters the room. 'Ah, Abb6, here you are; do you know, ladies, I was the Abbe's first penitent, and I promise you my confession astonished him!'" The inference from these two statements is deductive in character, in spite of the fact that neither of them is the statement of a principle or law. 1 Quoted by Bosanquet, Essentials of Logic, p. 140. The...
