On the Philosophy of Discovery, Chapters Historical and Critical

4. Causes in other Sciences.—But if it is, in the sciences just mentioned, impracticable to reduce our knowledge to laws of phenomena alone, without referring to causes, media, and other agencies; how much more plainly is it impossible to confine our thoughts to phenomena, and to laws of succession and resemblance, in other sciences, as chemistry, physiology, and geology? Who shall forbid us, or why should we be forbidden, to inquire whether chemical and galvanic forces are identical; whether irritability is a peculiar vital power; whether geological causes have been uniform or paroxysmal? To exclude such inquiries, would be to secure ourselves from the poison of error by abstaining from the banquet of truth:—it would be to attempt to feed our minds with the meagre diet of space and number, because we may find too delightful a relish in such matters as cause and end, symmetry and affinity, organization and development.

Thus M. Comte's arrangement of the progress of science as successively metaphysical and positive, is contrary to history in fact, and contrary to sound philosophy in principle. Nor is there any better foundation for his statement that theological views are to be found only in the rude infantine condition of human knowledge, and vanish as science advances. Even in material sciences this is not the case. We have shown in the chapter on Final Causes, that physiologists have been directed in their remarks by the conviction of a purpose in every part of the structure of animals; and that this idea, which had its rise after the first observations, has gone on constantly gaining strength and clearness, so that it is now the basis of a large portion of the science. We have seen, too, in the Book on the palætiological sciences, that the researches of that class do by no means lead us to reject an origin of the series of events, nor to suppose this origin to be included in the series of natural laws. Science has not at all shown any reason for denying either the creation or the purpose of the universe.

This is true of those aspects of the universe which have become the subjects of rigorous science: but how small a portion of the whole do they form! Especially how minute a proportion does our knowledge bear to our ignorance, if we admit into science, as M. Comte advises, only the laws of phenomena! Even in the best explored fields of science, how few such laws do we know! Meteorology, climate, terrestrial magnetism, the colours and other properties of bodies, the conditions of musical and articulate sound, and a thousand other facts of physics, are not defined by any known laws. In physiology we may readily convince ourselves how little we know of laws, since we can hardly study one species without discovering some unguessed property, or apply the microscope without seeing some new structure in the best known organs. And when we go on to social and moral and political matters, we may well doubt whether any one single rigorous rule of phenomena has ever been stated, although on such subjects man's ideas have been busily and eagerly working ever since his origin. What a wanton and baseless assumption it would be, then, to reject those suggestions of a Governor of the universe which we derive from man's moral and spiritual nature, and from the institutions of society, because we fancy we see in the small field of our existing "positive knowledge" a tendency to exclude "theological views!" Because we can explain the motion of the stars by a general Law which seems to imply no hyperphysical agency, and can trace a few more limited laws in other properties of matter, we are exhorted to reject convictions irresistibly suggested to us by our bodies and our souls, by history and antiquities, by conscience and human law.

5. M. Comte's practical philosophy.—It is not merely as a speculative doctrine that M. Comte urges the necessity of our thus following the guidance of "positive philosophy." The fevered and revolutionary condition of human society at present arises, according to him260, from the simultaneous employment of three kinds of philosophy radically incompatible;—theological, metaphysical, and positive philosophy. The remedy for the evil is to reject the two former, and to refer everything to that positive philosophy, of which the destined triumph cannot be doubtful. In like manner, our European education261, still essentially theological, metaphysical, and literary, must be replaced by a positive education, suited to the spirit of our epoch.

With these practical consequences of M. Comte's philosophy we are not here concerned: but the notice of them may serve to show how entirely the rejection of the theological view pervades his system; and how closely this rejection is connected with the principles which lead him also to reject the fundamental ideas of the sciences as we have presented them.

6. M. Comte on Hypotheses.—In the detail of M. Comte's work, I do not find any peculiar or novel remarks on the induction by which the sciences are formed; except we may notice, as such, his permission of hypotheses to the inquirer, already referred to. "There can only be," he says262, "two general modes fitted to reveal to us, in a direct and entirely rational manner, the true law of any phenomenon;—either the immediate analysis of this phenomenon, or its exact and evident relation to some more extended law, previously established;—in a word, induction, or deduction. But both these ways would certainly be insufficient, even with regard to the simplest phenomenon, in the eyes of any one who fully comprehends the essential difficulties of the intimate study of nature, if we did not often begin by anticipating the result, and making a provisory supposition, at first essentially conjectural, even with respect to some of the notions which constitute the final object of inquiry. Hence the introduction, which is strictly indispensable, of hypotheses in natural philosophy." We have already seen that the "permissio intellectus" had been noticed as a requisite step in discovery, as long before as the time of Bacon.

7. M. Comte's Classification of Sciences.—I do not think it necessary to examine in detail M. Comte's views of the philosophy of the different sciences; but it may illustrate the object of the present work, to make a remark upon his attempt to establish a distinction between physical and chemical science. This distinction he makes to consist in three points263;—that Physics considers general and Chemistry special properties;—that Physics considers masses and Chemistry molecules;—that in Physics the mode of arrangement of the molecules remains constant, while in Chemistry this arrangement is necessarily altered. M. Comte however allows that these lines of distinction are vague and insecure; for, among many others, magnetism, a special property, belongs to physics, and breaks down his first criterion; and molecular attractions are a constant subject of speculation in physics, so that the second distinction cannot be insisted on. To which we may add that the greater portion of chemistry does not attend at all to the arrangement of the molecules, so that the third character is quite erroneous. The real distinction of these branches of science is, as we have seen, the fundamental ideas which they employ. Physics deals with relations of space, time, and number, media, and scales of qualities, according to intensity and other differences; while chemistry has for its subject elements and attractions as shown in composition; and polarity, though in different senses, belongs to both. The failure of this attempt of M. Comte at distinguishing these provinces of science by their objects, may be looked upon as an illustration of the impossibility of establishing a philosophy of the sciences on any other ground than the ideas which they involve.

We have thus traced to its extreme point, so far as the nature of science is concerned, one of those two antagonistic opinions, of which the struggle began in the outset of philosophy, and has continued during the whole of her progress;—namely, the opinions which respectively make our sensations and our ideas the origin of our knowledge. The former, if it be consistent with itself, must consider all knowledge of causes as impossible, since no sensation can give us the idea of cause. And when this opinion is applied to science, it reduces it to the mere investigation of laws of phenomena, according to relations of space, time, and number. I purposely abstain, as far as possible, from the consideration of the other consequences, not strictly belonging to the physical sciences, which were drawn from the doctrine that all our ideas are only transformed sensations. The materialism, the atheism, the sensualist morality, the anarchical polity, which some of the disciples of the Sensational School erected upon the fundamental dogmas of their sect, do not belong to our present subject, and are matters too weighty to be treated of as mere accessories.

The above Remarks were written before I had seen the third volume of M. Comte's work, or the subsequent volumes. But I do not find, in anything which those volumes contain, any ground for altering what I have written. Indeed they are occupied altogether with subjects which do not come within the field of my present speculations.

CHAPTER XXII.

Mr. Mill's Logic 264

The History of the Inductive Sciences was published in 1837, and the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences in 1840. In 1843 Mr. Mill published his System of Logic, in which he states that without the aid derived from the facts and ideas in my volumes, the corresponding portion of his own would most probably not have been written, and quotes parts of what I have said with commendation. He also, however, dissents from me on several important and fundamental points, and argues against what I have said thereon. I conceive that it may tend to bring into a clearer light the doctrines which I have tried to establish, and the truth of them, if I discuss some of the differences between us, which I shall proceed to do265.

Mr. Mill's work has had, for a work of its abstruse character, a circulation so extensive, and admirers so numerous and so fervent, that it needs no commendation of mine. But if my main concern at present had not been with the points in which Mr. Mill differs from me, I should have had great pleasure in pointing out passages, of which there are many, in which Mr. Mill appears to me to have been very happy in promoting or in expressing philosophical truth.

There is one portion of his work indeed which tends to give it an interest of a wider kind than belongs to that merely scientific truth to which I purposely and resolutely confined my speculations in the works to which I have referred. Mr. Mill has introduced into his work a direct and extensive consideration of the modes of dealing with moral and political as well as physical questions; and I have no doubt that this part of his book has, for many of his readers, a more lively interest than any other. Such a comprehensive scheme seems to give to doctrines respecting science a value and a purpose which they cannot have, so long as they are restricted to mere material sciences. I still retain the opinion, however, upon which I formerly acted, that the philosophy of science is to be extracted from the portions of science which are universally allowed to be most certainly established, and that those are the physical sciences. I am very far from saying, or thinking, that there is no such thing as Moral and Political Science, or that no method can be suggested for its promotion; but I think that by attempting at present to include the Moral Sciences in the same formulæ with the Physical, we open far more controversies than we close; and that in the moral as in the physical sciences, the first step towards showing how truth is to be discovered, is to study some portion of it which is assented to so as to be beyond controversy.

I. What is Induction?—1. Confining myself, then, to the material sciences, I shall proceed to offer my remarks on Induction with especial reference to Mr. Mill's work. And in order that we may, as I have said, proceed as intelligibly as possible, let us begin by considering what we mean by Induction, as a mode of obtaining truth; and let us note whether there is any difference between Mr. Mill and me on this subject.

"For the purposes of the present inquiry," Mr. Mill says (i. 347266), "Induction may be defined the operation of discovering and forming general propositions:" meaning, as appears by the context, the discovery of them from particular facts. He elsewhere (i. 370) terms it "generalization from experience:" and again he speaks of it with greater precision as the inference of a more general proposition from less general ones.

2. Now to these definitions and descriptions I assent as far as they go; though, as I shall have to remark, they appear to me to leave unnoticed a feature which is very important, and which occurs in all cases of Induction, so far as we are concerned with it. Science, then, consists of general propositions, inferred from particular facts, or from less general propositions, by Induction; and it is our object to discern the nature and laws of Induction in this sense. That the propositions are general, or are more general than the facts from which they are inferred, is an indispensable part of the notion of Induction, and is essential to any discussion of the process, as the mode of arriving at Science, that is, at a body of general truths.

3. I am obliged therefore to dissent from Mr. Mill when he includes, in his notion of Induction, the process by which we arrive at individual facts from other facts of the same order of particularity.

Such inference is, at any rate, not Induction alone; if it be Induction at all, it is Induction applied to an example.

For instance, it is a general law, obtained by Induction from particular facts, that a body falling vertically downwards from rest, describes spaces proportional to the squares of the times. But that a particular body will fall through 16 feet in one second and 64 feet in two seconds, is not an induction simply, it is a result obtained by applying the inductive law to a particular case.

But further, such a process is often not induction at all. That a ball striking another ball directly will communicate to it as much momentum as the striking ball itself loses, is a law established by induction: but if, from habit or practical skill, I make one billiard-ball strike another, so as to produce the velocity which I wish, without knowing or thinking of the general law, the term Induction cannot then be rightly applied. If I know the law and act upon it, I have in my mind both the general induction and its particular application. But if I act by the ordinary billiard-player's skill, without thinking of momentum or law, there is no Induction in the case.

4. This distinction becomes of importance, in reference to Mr. Mill's doctrine, because he has extended his use of the term Induction, not only to the cases in which the general induction is consciously applied to a particular instance; but to the cases in which the particular instance is dealt with by means of experience, in that rude sense in which experience can be asserted of brutes; and in which, of course, we can in no way imagine that the law is possessed or understood, as a general proposition. He has thus, as I conceive, overlooked the broad and essential difference between speculative knowledge and practical action; and has introduced cases which are quite foreign to the idea of science, alongside with cases from which we may hope to obtain some views of the nature of science and the processes by which it must be formed.

5. Thus (ii. 232) he says, "This inference of one particular fact from another is a case of induction. It is of this sort of induction that brutes are capable." And to the same purpose he had previously said (i. 251), "He [the burnt child who shuns the fire] is not generalizing: he is inferring a particular from particulars. In the same way also, brutes reason … not only the burnt child, but the burnt dog, dreads the fire."

6. This confusion, (for such it seems to me,) of knowledge with practical tendencies, is expressed more in detail in other places. Thus he says (i. 118), "I cannot dig the ground unless I have an idea of the ground and of a spade, and of all the other things I am operating upon."

7. This appears to me to be a use of words which can only tend to confuse our idea of knowledge by obliterating all that is distinctive in human knowledge. It seems to me quite false to say that I cannot dig the ground, unless I have an idea of the ground and of my spade. Are we to say that we cannot walk the ground, unless we have an idea of the ground, and of our feet, and of our shoes, and of the muscles of our legs? Are we to say that a mole cannot dig the ground, unless he has an idea of the ground and of the snout and paws with which he digs it? Are we to say that a pholas cannot perforate a rock, unless he have an idea of the rock, and of the acid with which he corrodes it?

8. This appears to me, as I have said, to be a line of speculation which can lead to nothing but confusion. The knowledge concerning which I wish to inquire is human knowledge. And in order that I may have any chance of success in the inquiry, I find it necessary to single out that kind of knowledge which is especially and distinctively human. Hence, I pass by, in this part of my investigation, all the knowledge, if it is to be so called, which man has in no other way than brutes have it;—all that merely shows itself in action. For though action may be modified by habit, and habit by experience, in animals as well as in men, such experience, so long as it retains that merely practical form, is no part of the materials of science. Knowledge in a general form, is alone knowledge for that purpose; and to that, therefore, I must confine my attention; at least till I have made some progress in ascertaining its nature and laws, and am thus prepared to compare such knowledge,—human knowledge properly so called,—with mere animal tendencies to action; or even with practical skill which does not include, as for the most part practical skill does not include, speculative knowledge.

9. And thus, I accept Mr. Mill's definition of Induction only in its first and largest form; and reject, as useless and mischievous for our purposes, his extension of the term to the practical influence which experience of one fact exercises upon a creature dealing with similar facts. Such influence cannot be resolved into ideas and induction, without, as I conceive, making all our subsequent investigation vague and heterogeneous, indefinite and inconclusive. If we must speak of animals as learning from experience, we may at least abstain from applying to them terms which imply that they learn, in the same way in which men learn astronomy from the stars, and chemistry from the effects of mixture and heat. And the same may be said of the language which is to be used concerning what men learn, when their learning merely shows itself in action, and does not exist as a general thought. Induction must not be applied to such cases. Induction must be confined to cases where we have in our minds general propositions, in order that the sciences, which are our most instructive examples of the process we have to consider, may be, in any definite and proper sense, Inductive Sciences.

10. Perhaps some persons may be inclined to say that this difference of opinion, as to the extent of meaning which is to be given to the term Induction, is a question merely of words; a matter of definition only. This is a mode in which men in our time often seem inclined to dispose of philosophical questions; thus evading the task of forming an opinion upon such questions, while they retain the air of looking at the subject from a more comprehensive point of view. But as I have elsewhere said, such questions of definition are never questions of definition merely. A proposition is always implied along with the definition; and the truth of the proposition depends upon the settlement of the definition. This is the case in the present instance. We are speaking of Induction, and we mean that kind of Induction by which the sciences now existing among men have been constructed. On this account it is, that we cannot include, in the meaning of the term, mere practical tendencies or practical habits; for science is not constructed of these. No accumulation of these would make up any of the acknowledged sciences. The elements of such sciences are something of a kind different from practical habits. The elements of such sciences are principles which we know; truths which can be contemplated as being true. Practical habits, practical skill, instincts and the like, appear in action, and in action only. Such endowments or acquirements show themselves when the occasion for action arrives, and then, show themselves in the act; without being put, or being capable of being put, in the form of truths contemplated by the intellect. But the elements and materials of Science are necessary truths contemplated by the intellect. It is by consisting of such elements and such materials, that Science is Science. Hence a use of the term Induction which requires us to obliterate this distinction, must make it impossible for us to arrive at any consistent and intelligible view of the nature of Science, and of the mental process by which Sciences come into being. We must, for the purpose which Mr. Mill and I have in common, retain his larger and more philosophical definition of Induction,—that it is the inference of a more general proposition from less general ones.

11. Perhaps, again, some persons may say, that practical skill and practical experience lead to science, and may therefore be included in the term Induction, which describes the formation of science. But to this we reply, that these things lead to science as occasions only, and do not form part of science; and that science begins then only when we look at the facts in a general point of view. This distinction is essential to the philosophy of science. The rope-dancer may, by his performances, suggest, to himself or to others, properties of the center of gravity; but this is so, because man has a tendency to speculate and to think of general truths, as well as a tendency to dance on a rope on special occasions, and to acquire skill in such dancing by practice. The rope-dancer does not dance by Induction, any more than the dancing dog does. To apply the terms Science and Induction to such cases, carries us into the regions of metaphor; as when we call birds of passage "wise meteorologists," or the bee "a natural chemist, who turns the flower-dust into honey." This is very well in poetry: but for our purposes we must avoid recognizing these cases as really belonging to the sciences of meteorology and chemistry,—as really cases of Induction. Induction for us is general propositions, contemplated as such, derived from particulars.

Science may result from experience and observation by Induction; but Induction is not therefore the same thing as experience and observation. Induction is experience or observation consciously looked at in a general form. This consciousness and generality are necessary parts of that knowledge which is science. And accordingly, on the other hand, science cannot result from mere Instinct, as distinguished from Reason; because Instinct by its nature is not conscious and general, but operates blindly and unconsciously in particular cases, the actor not seeing or thinking of the rule which he obeys.

12. A little further on I shall endeavour to show that not only a general thought, but a general word or phrase is a requisite element in Induction. This doctrine, of course, still more decidedly excludes the case of animals, and of mere practical knowledge in man. A burnt child dreads the fire; but reason must be unfolded, before the child learns to understand the words "fire will hurt you." The burnt dog never thus learns to understand words. And this difference points to an entirely different state of thought in the two cases: or rather, to a difference between a state of rational thought on the one hand, and of mere practical instinct on the other.