Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- PART I OF THE GENERAL NATURE AND ADVANTAGES OF THE STUDY OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES
- PART II OF THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH PHYSICAL SCIENCE RELIES FOR ITS SUCCESSFUL PROSECUTION, AND THE RULES BY WHICH A SYSTEMATIC EXAMINATION OF NATURE SHOULD BE CONDUCTED, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS OF THEIR INFLUENCE AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE HISTORY OF ITS PROGRESS
- CHAP. I Of Experience as the Source of our Knowledge. — Of the Dismissal of Prejudices. — Of the Evidence of our Senses
- CHAP. II Of the Analysis of Phenomena
- CHAP. III Of the State of Physical Science in General, previous to the Age of Galileo and Bacon
- CHAP. IV Of the Observation of Facts and the Collection of Instances
- CHAP. V Of the Classification of Natural Objects and Phenomena, and of Nomenclature
- CHAP. VI Of the First Stage of Induction. — The Discovery of Proximate Causes, and Laws of the lowest Degree of Generality, and their Verification
- CHAP. VII Of the higher Degrees of Inductive Generalization, and of the Formation and Verification of Theories
- PART III OF THE SUBDIVISION OF PHYSICS INTO DISTINCT BRANCHES, AND THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS
- Index
CHAP. VII - Of the higher Degrees of Inductive Generalization, and of the Formation and Verification of Theories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- PART I OF THE GENERAL NATURE AND ADVANTAGES OF THE STUDY OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES
- PART II OF THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH PHYSICAL SCIENCE RELIES FOR ITS SUCCESSFUL PROSECUTION, AND THE RULES BY WHICH A SYSTEMATIC EXAMINATION OF NATURE SHOULD BE CONDUCTED, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS OF THEIR INFLUENCE AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE HISTORY OF ITS PROGRESS
- CHAP. I Of Experience as the Source of our Knowledge. — Of the Dismissal of Prejudices. — Of the Evidence of our Senses
- CHAP. II Of the Analysis of Phenomena
- CHAP. III Of the State of Physical Science in General, previous to the Age of Galileo and Bacon
- CHAP. IV Of the Observation of Facts and the Collection of Instances
- CHAP. V Of the Classification of Natural Objects and Phenomena, and of Nomenclature
- CHAP. VI Of the First Stage of Induction. — The Discovery of Proximate Causes, and Laws of the lowest Degree of Generality, and their Verification
- CHAP. VII Of the higher Degrees of Inductive Generalization, and of the Formation and Verification of Theories
- PART III OF THE SUBDIVISION OF PHYSICS INTO DISTINCT BRANCHES, AND THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS
- Index
Summary
(201.) As particular inductions and laws of the first degree of generality are obtained from the consideration of individual facts, so Theories result from a consideration of these laws, and of the proximate causes brought into view in the previous process, regarded all together as constituting a new set of phenomena, the creatures of reason rather than of sense, and each representing under general language innumerable particular facts. In raising these higher inductions, therefore, more scope is given to the exercise of pure reason than in slowly groping out our first results. The mind is more disencumbered of matter, and moves as it were in its own element. What is now before it, it perceives more intimately, and less through the medium of sense, or at least not in the same manner as when actually at work on the immediate objects of sense. But it must not be therefore supposed that, in the formation of theories, we are abandoned to the unrestrained Exercise of imagination, or at liberty to lay down arbitrary principles, or assume the existence of mere fanciful causes. The liberty of speculation which we possess in the domains of theory is not like the wild licence of the slave broke loose from his fetters, but rather like that of the freeman who has learned the lessons of self-restraint in the school of just subordination.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy , pp. 190 - 220Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1830