NOVUM ORGANON
RENOVATUM.
By WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D.,
MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.
BEING THE SECOND PART OF THE PHILOSOPHY
OF THE INDUCTIVE SCIENCES.
THE THIRD EDITION, WITH LARGE ADDITIONS.
ΛΑΜΠΑΔIΑ ΕΧΟΝΤΕΣ ΔIΑΔΩΣΟΥΣIΝ ΑΛΛΗΛΟIΣ
LONDON:
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND.
1858.
It is to our immortal countryman; Bacon, that we owe the broad announcement of this grand and fertile principle; and the developement of the idea, that the whole of natural philosophy consists entirely of a series of inductive generalizations, commencing with the most circumstantially stated particulars, and carried up to universal laws, or axioms, which comprehend in their statements every subordinate degree of generality; and of a corresponding series of inverted reasoning from generals to particulars, by which these axioms are traced back into their remotest consequences, and all particular propositions deduced from them; as well those by whose immediate considerations we rose to their discovery, as those of which we had no previous knowledge.
Herschel, Discourse on Natural Philosophy, Art. 96.