A second reason for this confused status in the fieldof inductive logic is the fact of its being more closely related to the events of every day living. Induction is the natural method of childhood; the popular method of the school room; and the most used method of common life. In consequence its ramifications are so varied and multitudinous, that it will take centuries of thinking to reduce the doctrine of induction to that uniformity and definiteness which so distinguishes deduction.
4. THE VARIOUS CONCEPTIONS OF INDUCTION.
The attending quotations will give the student a fair idea of the leading conceptions concerning induction:
(1) “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 under similar circumstances at all times.” “Induction, as above defined, is a process of inference; it proceeds from the known to the unknown.” “Any process in which what seems the conclusion is no wider than the premises from which it is drawn, does not fall within the meaning of the term.”—J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, 1892, p. 175.
(2) “An induction is a generalization or an inference based upon propositions that state observed facts.” “The truth inferred may be general or particular, but it must be one which we cannot perceive in a single act of observation.”—Ballentine’s Inductive Logic, 1896, p. 14.
(3) “Induction is the process of inference by which we get at general truths from particular facts or cases.”—Ryland’s Logic, 1900, p. 148.
(4) “Induction may be defined as the legitimate inference of the general from the particular, or, of the more general from the less general.”—Fowler, 1905, p. 10, Vol. 2.
(5) “The term induction has been used by logicians to denote this leap of the mind from the limitations of its positive knowledge to belief in universal laws.” “In pedagogy, however, the term is applied to the whole process of arriving at general truths or principles.”—Salisbury’s Theory of Teaching, p. 156.
5. INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION CONTIGUOUS PROCESSES.
If there is one thing above another which modern logic is emphasizing it is the unity of the mind and the contiguity of thinking. Induction and deduction are dove-tailed processes which characterize all thinking worthy of the name. Where induction ceases, deduction commences, and vice versa. It becomes the function of inductive thinking to establish a connection between what has been experienced and what has not been experienced. Therefore, the conclusion of an induction must always contain more than is implied in the premises. The premises denote facts which have been observed; whereas the conclusion denotes the observed facts of the premises plus analogous facts which have not been observed. Inductive thought ventures into the unknown, and attempts to establish a bond of connection between it and something already known. Induction seeks new knowledge, and does so by taking that “leap into the dark” already referred to as the “inductive hazard.”