Lanterna Rally

Author: Bernard Bosanquet

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 9781230316857

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ... which the universal nature, or the system of further differences charged with the universal nature, is referred to reality. In Deduction par excellence the Real presents itself as qualified by an intelligible system--e.g. by mathematical attributes; and further differences are referred to reality as constructed by and out of this system. It may be doubted whether Newton's discovery of Gravitation was Inductive or Deductive. That in process it was largely deductive there is of course no doubt. The popular story however, about the falling applex, would indicate, if true, an inductive aspect--that of a problem set by concrete data, and resolved by analysis and hypothesis. But we must not suppose Newton's mind to have been as empty of mathematical generalisations as our own. He probably brought a systematised qualification of Reality, drawn from elements in the researches of previous mathematicians, to meet the facts that demanded explanation. In this example the aspects of Induction and of Deduction are about equally balanced, and we see the whole principle involved in the distinction together with its merely transitory importance. The relation of the universal to its differences is not affected by the order in which they have presented themselves to us as qualifications of Reality. But it is this order alone which furnishes the differentia of Induction. 1 There may be and indeed must be true induction in mathematical matter in so far as instances suggest underlying laws. The case of gravitation, to be discussed below, illustrates the degree in which this is possible. Regarded as relations within a system, i.e. in the light of the principle of Sufficient Reason, all inductive explanations point beyond themselves. They demand in the first...