The fourth canon is that of the Method of Residues, viz.: Subduct from any phenomenon such part as is known by previous inductions to be the effect of certain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomenon is the effect of the remaining antecedents. This method is a modification of the method of difference, from which it differs in obtaining, of the two required instances, only the positive instance, by observation or experiment, but the negative, by deduction. Its certainty, therefore, in any given case, is conditional on the previous inductions having been obtained by the method of difference, and on there being in reality no remaining antecedents besides those given as such.
The fifth canon is that of the Method of Concomitant Variations, viz.: Whatever phenomenon varies in any manner whenever another phenomenon varies in some particular manner, is either a cause or an effect of that phenomenon, or (since they may be effects of a common cause) is connected with it through some fact of causation. Through this method alone can we find the laws of the permanent causes. For, though those of the permanent causes whose influence is local may be escaped from by changing the scene of the observation or experiment, many can neither be excluded nor even kept isolated from each other; and, therefore, in such cases, the method of difference, which requires a negative instance, and that of agreement, which requires the different instances to agree only in one circumstance, in order to prove causation, are (together with the methods which are merely forms of these) equally inapplicable. But, though many permanent antecedents insist on being always present, and never present alone, yet we have the resource of making or finding instances in which (the accompanying antecedents remaining unchanged) their influence is varied and modified. This method can be used most effectually when the variations of the cause are variations of quantity; and then, if we know the absolute quantities of the cause and the effect, we may affirm generally that, at least within our limits of observation, the variations of the cause will be attended by similar variations of the effect; it being a corollary from the principle of the composition of causes, that more of the cause is followed by more of the effect. This method is employed usually when the method of difference is impossible; but it is also of use to determine according to what law the quantity or different relations of an effect ascertained by the method of difference follow those of the cause.
These four methods are the only possible modes of experimental enquiry. Dr. Whewell attacks them, first, on the ground (and the canon of ratiocination was attacked on the same) that they assume the reduction of an argument to formulæ, which (with the procuring the evidence) is itself the chief difficulty. And this is in truth the case: but, to reduce an argument to a particular form, we must first know what the form is; and in showing us this, Inductive Logic does a service the value of which is tested by the number of faulty inductions in vogue. Dr. Whewell next implies a complaint that no discoveries have ever been made by these four methods. But, as the analogous argument against the syllogism was invalidated by applying equally as against all reasoning, which must be reducible to syllogism, so this also falls by its own generality, since, if true against these methods, it must be true against all observation and experiment, since these must ever proceed by one of the four. And, moreover, even if the four methods were not methods of discovery, as they are, they would yet be subjects for logic, as being, at all events, the sole methods of Proof, which (unless Dr. Whewell be correct in his view that inductions are simply conceptions consistent with the facts they colligate) is the principal topic of logic.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Chap. IX. consists of 'Miscellaneous Examples of the Four Methods,' which cannot be well represented in an abridged form.
CHAPTER X.
PLURALITY OF CAUSES, AND INTERMIXTURE OF EFFECTS.
The difficulty in tracing the laws of nature arises chiefly from the Intermixture of Effects, and from the Plurality of Causes. The possibility of the latter in any given case—that is, the possibility that the same effect may have been produced by different causes—makes the Method of Agreement (when applied to positive instances) inconclusive, if the instances are few; for that Method involves a tacit supposition, that the same effect in different instances, which have one common antecedent, must follow in all from the same cause, viz. from their common antecedent. When the instances are varied and very many (how many, it is for the Theory of Probability to consider), the supposition, that the presence in all of the common antecedent may be simply a coincidence, is rebutted; and this is the sole reason why mere number of instances, differing only in immaterial points, is of any value. As applied, indeed, to negative instances, i.e. to those resembling each other in the absence of a certain circumstance, the Method of Agreement is not vitiated by Plurality of Causes. But the negative premiss cannot generally be worked unless an affirmative be joined with it: and then the Method is the Joint Method of Agreement and Difference. Thus, to find the cause of Transparency, we do not enquire in what circumstance the numberless non-transparent objects agree; but we enquire, first, in what the few transparent ones agree; and then, whether all the opaque do not agree in the absence of this circumstance.
Not only may there be Plurality of Causes, the whole of the effect being produced now by one, now by another antecedent; but there may also be Intermixture of Effects, through the interference of different causes with each other, so that part of the total effect is due to one, and part to another cause. This latter contingency, which, more than all else, complicates, the study of nature, does not affect the enquiry into those (the exceptional) cases, where, as in chemistry, the total effect is something quite different to the separate effects, and governed by different laws. There the great problem is to discover, not the properties, but the cause of the new phenomenon, i.e. the particular conjunction of agents whence it results; which could indeed never be ascertained by specific enquiry, were it not for the peculiarity, not of all these cases (e.g. not of mental phenomena), but of many, viz. that the heterogeneous effects of combined causes often reproduce, i.e. are transformed into their causes (as, e.g. water into its components, hydrogen and oxygen). The great difficulty is not there to discover the properties of the new phenomenon itself, for these can be found by experiment like the simple effects of any other cause; since, in this class of cases the effects of the separate causes give place to a new effect, and thereby cease to need consideration as separate effects. But in the far larger class of cases, viz. when the total effect is the exact sum of the separate effects of all the causes (the case of the Composition of Causes), at no point may it be overlooked that the effect is not simple but complex, the result of various separate causes, all of which are always tending to produce the whole of their several natural effects; having, it may be, their effects modified, disturbed, or even prevented by each other, but always preserving their action, since laws of causation cannot have exceptions.