of deduction
Then deductive movement begins. Further observations, recollections, reasonings are conducted on the basis of a development of the ideas suggested: if burglars were responsible, such and such things would have happened; articles of value would be missing. Here the man is going from a general principle or relation to special features that accompany it, to particulars,—not back, however, merely to the original particulars (which would be fruitless or take him in a circle), but to new details, the actual discovery or nondiscovery of which will test the principle. The man turns to a box of valuables; some things are gone; some, however, are still there. Perhaps he has himself removed the missing articles, but has forgotten it. His experiment is not a decisive test. He thinks of the silver in the sideboard—the children would not have taken that nor would he absent-mindedly have changed its place. He looks; all the solid ware is gone. The conception of burglars is confirmed; examination of windows and doors shows that they have been tampered with. Belief culminates; the original isolated facts have been woven into a coherent fabric. The idea first suggested (inductively) has been employed to reason out hypothetically certain additional particulars not yet experienced, that ought to be there, if the suggestion is correct. Then new acts of observation have shown that the particulars theoretically called for are present, and by this process the hypothesis is strengthened, corroborated. This moving back and forth between the observed facts and the conditional idea is kept up till a coherent experience of an object is substituted for the experience of conflicting details—or else the whole matter is given up as a bad job.
Science is the same operations carefully performed
Sciences exemplify similar attitudes and operations, but with a higher degree of elaboration of the instruments of caution, exactness and thoroughness. This greater elaboration brings about specialization, an accurate marking off of various types of problems from one another, and a corresponding segregation and classification of the materials of experience associated with each type of problem. We shall devote the remainder of this chapter to a consideration of the devices by which the discovery, the development, and the testing of meanings are scientifically carried on.
§ 2. Guidance of the Inductive Movement
Guidance is indirect
Control of the formation of suggestion is necessarily indirect, not direct; imperfect, not perfect. Just because all discovery, all apprehension involving thought of the new, goes from the known, the present, to the unknown and absent, no rules can be stated that will guarantee correct inference. Just what is suggested to a person in a given situation depends upon his native constitution (his originality, his genius), temperament, the prevalent direction of his interests, his early environment, the general tenor of his past experiences, his special training, the things that have recently occupied him continuously or vividly, and so on; to some extent even upon an accidental conjunction of present circumstances. These matters, so far as they lie in the past or in external conditions, clearly escape regulation. A suggestion simply does or does not occur; this or that suggestion just happens, occurs, springs up. If, however, prior experience and training have developed an attitude of patience in a condition of doubt, a capacity for suspended judgment, and a liking for inquiry, indirect control of the course of suggestions is possible. The individual may return upon, revise, restate, enlarge, and analyze the facts out of which suggestion springs. Inductive methods, in the technical sense, all have to do with regulating the conditions under which observation, memory, and the acceptance of the testimony of others (the operations supplying the raw data) proceed.
Method of indirect regulation
Given the facts A B C D on one side and certain individual habits on the other, suggestion occurs automatically. But if the facts A B C D are carefully looked into and thereby resolved into the facts A´ B´´ R S, a suggestion will automatically present itself different from that called up by the facts in their first form. To inventory the facts, to describe exactly and minutely their respective traits, to magnify artificially those that are obscure and feeble, to reduce artificially those that are so conspicuous and glaring as to be distracting,—these are ways of modifying the facts that exercise suggestive force, and thereby indirectly guiding the formation of suggested inferences.
Illustration from diagnosis