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Read Ebook: A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive 7th Edition Vol. II by Mill John Stuart
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Ebook has 731 lines and 202475 words, and 15 pages
OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
ON INDUCTION.--
? 1. Can all the sequences in nature be resolvable into one law? 3
? 1. How a progressive effect results from the simple continuance of the cause 29
? 1. Definition of an empirical law 38
? 1. The proof of empirical laws depends on the theory of chance 49
? 1. Foundation of the doctrine of chances, as taught by mathematics 61
? 1. Derivative laws, when not casual, are almost always contingent on collocations 78
? 1. Various senses of the word analogy 86
? 1. The law of causality does not rest on an instinct 95
? 1. Uniformities of coexistence which result from laws of sequence 110
? 1. The inferences called probable, rest on approximate generalizations 124
? 1. Propositions which assert mere existence 139
? 1. Improbability and impossibility 161
OF OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION.
? 1. Observation, how far a subject of logic 183
? 1. The comparison which is a preliminary to induction implies general conceptions 193
? 1. The fundamental property of names as an instrument of thought 209
? 1. First requisite of philosophical language, a steady and determinate meaning for every general name 215
? 1. How circumstances originally accidental become incorporated into the meaning of words 236
? 1. Second requisite of philosophical language, a name for every important meaning 248
? 1. Classification as here treated of, wherein different from the classification implied in naming 266
? 1. Natural groups should be arranged in a natural series 284
ON FALLACIES.
? 1. Theory of fallacies a necessary part of logic 295
? 1. On what criteria a classification of fallacies should be grounded 301
? 1. Character of this class of Fallacies 309
? 1. Non-observation, and Mal-observation 341
? 1. Character of the class 356
? 1. Introductory Remarks 377
? 1. Fallacy of Ambiguous Terms 384
ON THE LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES.
? 1. The backward state of the Moral Sciences can only be remedied by applying to them the methods of Physical Science, duly extended and generalized 413
? 1. Are human actions subject to the law of causality? 417
? 1. There may be sciences which are not exact sciences 426
? 1. What is meant by Laws of Mind 432
? 1. The Empirical Laws of Human Nature 445
? 1. Are Social Phenomena a subject of Science? 461
? 1. Characters of the mode of thinking which deduces political doctrines from specific experience 466
? 1. Characters of this mode of thinking 476
? 1. The Direct and Inverse Deductive Methods 486
? 1. Distinction between the general Science of Society, and special sociological inquiries 506
? 1. The subjection of historical facts to uniform laws is verified by statistics 529
? 1. Morality not a science, but an Art 544
OF INDUCTION.
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 must be ultimate laws; and that every resolution of a derivative law into more general laws, brings us nearer to them.
Since we are continually discovering that uniformities, not previously known to be other than ultimate, are derivative, and resolvable into more general laws; since we are continually discovering the explanation of some sequence which was previously known only as a fact; it becomes an interesting question whether there are any necessary limits to this philosophical operation, or whether it may proceed until all the uniform sequences in nature are resolved into some one universal law. For this seems, at first sight, to be the ultimatum towards which the progress of induction, by the Deductive Method resting on a basis of observation and experiment, is tending. Projects of this kind were universal in the infancy of philosophy; any speculations which held out a less brilliant prospect, being in those early times deemed not worth pursuing. And the idea receives so much apparent countenance from the nature of the most remarkable achievements of modern science, that speculators are even now frequently appearing, who profess either to have solved the problem, or to suggest modes in which it may one day be solved. Even where pretensions of this magnitude are not made, the character of the solutions which are given or sought of particular classes of phenomena, often involves such conceptions of what constitutes explanation, as would render the notion of explaining all phenomena whatever by means of some one cause or law, perfectly admissible.
The ideal limit, therefore, of the explanation of natural phenomena would be to show that each distinguishable variety of our sensations, or other states of consciousness, has only one sort of cause; that, for example, whenever we perceive a white colour, there is some one condition or set of conditions which is always present, and the presence of which always produces in us that sensation. As long as there are several known modes of production of a phenomenon, so long it is not impossible that one of these modes of production may be resolved into another, or that all of them may be resolved into some more general mode of production not hitherto recognised. But when the modes of production are reduced to one, we cannot, in point of simplification, go any further. This one may not, after all, be the ultimate mode; there may be other links to be discovered between the supposed cause and the effect; but we can only further resolve the known law, by introducing some other law hitherto unknown; which will not diminish the number of ultimate laws.
In what cases, accordingly, has science been most successful in explaining phenomena, by resolving their complex laws into laws of greater simplicity and generality? Hitherto chiefly in cases of the propagation of various phenomena through space: and, first and principally, the most extensive and important of all facts of that description, the fact of motion. Now this is exactly what might be expected from the principles here laid down. Not only is motion one of the most universal of all phenomena, it is also one of those which, apparently at least, are produced in the greatest number of ways; but the phenomenon itself is always, to our sensations, the same in every respect but degree. Differences of duration, or of velocity, are evidently differences in degree only; and differences of direction in space, which alone has any semblance of being a distinction in kind, entirely disappear by a change in our own position; indeed the very same motion appears to us, according to our position, to take place in every variety of direction, and motions in every different direction to take place in the same. And again, motion in a straight line and in a curve are no otherwise distinct than that the one is motion continuing in the same direction, the other is motion which at each instant changes its direction. There is, therefore, according to the principles I have stated, no absurdity in supposing that all motion may be produced in one and the same way; by the same kind of cause. Accordingly, the greatest achievements in physical science have consisted in resolving one observed law of the production of motion into the laws of other known modes of production, or the laws of several such modes into one more general mode; as when the fall of bodies to the earth, and the motions of the planets, were brought under the one law of the mutual attraction of all particles of matter; when the motions said to be produced by magnetism were shown to be produced by electricity; when the motions of fluids in a lateral direction, or even contrary to the direction of gravity, were shown to be produced by gravity; and the like. There is an abundance of distinct causes of motion still unresolved into one another; gravitation, heat, electricity, chemical action, nervous action, and so forth; but whether the efforts of the present generation of savans to resolve all these different modes of production into one, are ultimately successful or not, the attempt so to resolve them is perfectly legitimate. For though these various causes produce, in other respects, sensations intrinsically different, and are not, therefore, capable of being resolved into one another, yet in so far as they all produce motion, it is quite possible that the immediate antecedent of the motion may in all these different cases be the same; nor is it impossible that these various agencies themselves may, as the new doctrines assert, all of them have for their own immediate antecedent, modes of molecular motion.
We need not extend our illustration to other cases, as for instance to the propagation of light, sound, heat, electricity, &c. through space, or any of the other phenomena which have been found susceptible of explanation by the resolution of their observed laws into more general laws. Enough has been said to display the difference between the kind of explanation and resolution of laws which is chimerical, and that of which the accomplishment is the great aim of science; and to show into what sort of elements the resolution must be effected, if at all.
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