In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER VIII The Inductive Process and the Doctrine of Analogy Scientists could not for long ignore the fact that they were bound, in some measure, to take account of that which they could not directly observe. The newer scientinc interests of the period-historical studies like geology, or the study of the imponderables, such as light, heat, and electricity-obviously demanded some kind of inference that went signincantly ''beyond the facts." Conventional formulations of the inductive process were of little help for these interests, for they were formulated with reference to an earlier stage of science. Generally, the inductive models were quite nicely calculated to derive answers to problems of the science of Bacon's daY'! but certainly no later than that of Newton. Scientists of the early nineteenth century, in a word, were erecting a philosophy of natural history for a world in which analysis was quickly replacing classmcation , in which construction was replacing discovery. According to the usual interpretation of inductive certainty, it was to be extended only to the act of classifying those materials immediately at hand. The Scottish philosophy, it will be recalled, offered a convenient justiBcation for belief in the validity of one's classincation as a simple description, for "man is so constituted" that he could not doubt the reality of that which presented itself to his senses. Therefore, taxonomic judgments taking the form of "this C resembles A more nearly than it does B" could not be doubted, for-so the opinion went-this was merely a "complex" sense impression . But once the judgment was extended to "all C's resemble A more nearly than they do B," the received Scottish philosophy provided no really satisfactory justiBcation. Such extensions of the 164 INDUCTIVE PROCESS inductive generalization wer~with marked reluctanc~dmitted into science as "theories"; but in careful speech they could not be given the more honorific title, "laws." The greatest difficulties in the inductive problem, however, could be overlooked as long as the generalization could be regarded as a simple probability consideration concerning the next items in the series to be examined. One could always regard such conclusions as tentative, and he could hopefully await confirmation or rejection, which was sure to come soon by the ordinary processes of science. But if the next items in the series were not to be directly examined-if they were beyond human powers of observation, or if they were either far in the future or far in the geolOgical past-the problem became entirely different. Could one assume that they, too, would conform to expectations, even when he had no way of directly testing the assumptions? One common reaction to such a perplexing situation was discussed in the preceding chapter. One simply drew a line at those points beyond which direct observation could not be expected to go, and declared that this marked the limits of science. Others, not quite so willing to adopt this defeatist attitude, began searching for ways to broaden the range of their philosophy. Newton, of course, to whom American scientists frequently appealed , had offered as one of his rules of philosophizing a rule of thumb concerning inductive generalizations: "The qualities of bodies which admit neither intension nor remission of degree, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever." (Rule III) But Newton himself had realized that his experimental method could not assure truth-it could not assure that the very next experiment would not invalidate an apparently well-founded generalization. And to minds in need of certainty, a type which seems to have been well-represented in nineteenthcentury America, such a provisional basis for science would never be satisfactory. Consequently, when American scientists did appeal to this particular rule, they were much more likely to fasten upon another part of it, where Newton admonished them not to relinquish the evidence of experience for the sake of "dreams and fIctions of our own devising." With no justiflcation prOvided for it, Newton's own rule seemed to them suspiciously like one of those "dreams and fIctions." INDUCTIVE PROCESS 165 Neither American philosophers nor scientists were much concerned with fundamental epistemological problems of the type David Hume had grappled with. The Scottish philosophers had met the enemy there and had vanquished him to the satisfaction of the Baconian mentality. That part of Hume's argument which was not simply dismissed as the deranged wanderings of...

Share