Beschreibung
First edition, very rare offprint, of this important precis of and precursor to Whewell's influential 'History of the Inductive Sciences' (1837) and 'The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences' (1840). "[Whewell] thought that induction was the basic method of science. He understood induction not as a form of inference from particulars to generalizations, but as a conceptual act of coming to see that a group of data can best be understood and organized (his term was 'colligated') under a certain idea. Furthermore, induction was demonstrative in that it yields necessary truths, propositions the logical opposites of which cannot be clearly conceived. The zenith of the inductive process was reached when a 'consilience of inductions' took place - when sets of data previously considered disjoint came to be seen as derivable from the same, much richer theory. Although Whewell thought that the paradigm form of a scientific theory was deductive, he departed from the orthodox hypothetico-deductivist view of science by claiming that tests of the acceptability of given theories are extraevidential, based on considerations of simplicity and consilience" (DSB). "In his 1834 paper Whewell's focus is on mechanics. Since the science of mechanics studies the causes (i.e. the forces) of motions, they depend on the 'universal principles presupposed in all our reasoning concerning causes' . These principles of causation are expressed by means of the following three axioms: I. Every change is produced by a cause; II. Causes are measured by their effects; III. Action is always accompanied by an equal and opposite Reaction . . . Now, each of the laws of motion corresponds to and is based on the forms of these axioms: the first law states that a body not acted upon by any force will go in a straight line with an invariable velocity (or put positively, that each non-inertial motion is caused by an impressed force); the second that, when an impressed force acts, its accelerative quantity is measured by the accelerative effect produced; and the third that, when one body acts upon another, there will be an equal and opposite reaction-force. From this Whewell concluded: 'And so far as the laws are announced in this form, they will be of absolute and universal truth, and independent of any particular experiment or observation whatever. But though these laws of motion are necessarily and infallibly true, they are, in the form in which we have stated them, entirely useless and inapplicable. It is impossible to deduce from them any definite and positive conclusion, without some additional knowledge or assumption.' What the precise cause of retardation is in the actual motions of bodies, how we should measure the accelerative effect, and how we should measure the action (i.e. the motive force) can only be established by observation. 'The laws may be considered as a formula derived from a priori reasonings, where experience assigns the value of the terms which enter into the formula'" (Ducheyne, 'Kant and Whewell on Bridging Principles between Metaphysics and Science', Kant Studien 102 (2011), pp. 22-45). This is the only journal article listed by DSB under Whewell's major writings in history and philosophy of science. This offprint was published one year before the volume of the Transactions in which it appeared, which is dated 1835 on the title. OCLC lists 5 copies, all in the UK; Library Hub adds two further copies in the UK. 4to, pp. [3], 2-24 (offsetting to first 2 leaves caused by an inserted sheet of manuscript calculations). Original printed wrappers, old paper spine strip.
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