(b) Immaterial antecedents are those which precede a given phenomenon and yet, under the most favorable situations, have no causal connection with said phenomenon.For example, the various antecedents of the heavy rain may have been a south wind, forgetting to take an umbrella, missing the car and having to walk, etc. Clearly these antecedents, with the exception of the first, are immaterial.
(c) The law of agreement demands that all the material antecedents receive consideration, but often the situation is too complex to make this possible; a fair illustration of such would be an attempt to ascertain all of the antecedents of “the high cost of living.”
(d) The law of agreement never precludes the possibility of error; as it is quite impossible to carry the analysis to the point of absolute certainty. Of all the methods, “agreement” is the least reliable. Despite the foregoing objections, however, the method is of positive value because of its suggestiveness; opening the door to plausible hypotheses it gives the investigators a working basis.
3. METHOD OF DIFFERENCE.
(1) Principle stated.
Says Mill, “If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation occurs, and an instance in which it does not occur, have every circumstance in common save one, that one occurring only in the former; the circumstance in which alone the two instances differ is the effect or the cause of an indispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon.”
To put this in simple terms: Whatever is invariablypresent when the phenomenon occurs and invariably absent when the phenomenon does not occur, other circumstances remaining the same, is probably the cause or the effect of the phenomenon.
(2) Method symbolized.
Using the same symbols as were used in “Agreement.”
Antecedents Consequents