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Peirce's Treatment of Induction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Thomas A. Goudge
Thomas A. Goudge*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

Charles Peirce was one of those rare individuals, an expert logician who is at the same time an experienced practical scientist. His logical acumen was apparent even to his contemporaries; while an early training in chemistry, astronomy, geodesy and optics, left him, as he declares, “saturated through and through with the spirit of the physical sciences.“ One is therefore hardly surprised to discover that he was deeply interested in scientific methodology—particularly in the logic of induction. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that some of his most significant contributions to philosophy were made in precisely this field. No apology is thus required for devoting attention to them. In the present paper I want to sketch his treatment of induction very briefly, and attempt a tentative estimate of its validity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , January 1940 , pp. 56 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1940

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Footnotes

1

Presented with certain omissions on the program of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut; December 1938.

References

Notes

2 Collided Papers, Vol. I, Paragraph 3.

3 II, 756.

4 II, 758.

5 II, 759.

6 II, 726.

7 II, 696.

8 Ibid.

9 II, 731.

10 II, 737.

11 I, 96.

12 II, 755.

13 II, 682 ff.

14 V, 342.

15 Cf. Russell, Principles of Mathematics, p. 11 n. “What is called induction appears to me to be either disguised deduction, or a mere method of making plausible guesses.” 16 II, 769.

17 Cf. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.

The expression “continuum of inquiry” is by no means free from ambiguity. The continuity implied is neither mathematical nor metaphysical, but is rather the historical continuity created by the co-operative, social character of scientific investigation.

18 V, 431.

19 V, 342.

20 II, 749.

21 Mind and the World-Order, p. 353.

22 ibid.

23 Cf. E. Nagel, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXX, No. 14, p. 385.

24 I hope to deal with this important issue, as well as with the relation of induction to abduction and deduction, in a forthcoming volume to be entitled The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce.