An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

OR SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 293
he treats it as a different kind of proof from
"
induction," or
the
"
methods fail. In complex cases, where numerous causes
"
experimental methods ; it is available where these
are interacting to produce an effect, the laws of the separate
causes must be ascertained by "induction" (i.e., by one or
more of the five methods mentioned by Mill, Agreement,
Difference, Double Agreement, Concomitant Variations,
Residues) ; then follows the suggestion or hypothesis, that
a particular combination of these causes is at work in the
particular case ; the effect of the supposed combination is
ascertained by deductive reasoning, and the results of the tA
deductions are compared with the facts. He refuses to calK
this process
"
induction," and restricts this term to the pro
cess of generalising from experience by the five methods.
He must have regarded these methods as applicable directly,
without any previous assumption, to the masses of fact which
ordinary experience presents to us : by this means the facts
are to be made to disclose uniform laws. This is just what
*K V*-
the methods will not do. They require prepared material ;
and this means that they require much preliminary scientific
arrangement of facts. They require also preliminary theories
or conjectures to be tested.
In the Methods of Observation and Experiment the
function of hypothesis is restricted to the suggestion of
possible causes ;
but in the Methods of Explanation, its
function is more fundamental. The complete Method
of Explanation, which is also the complete Inductive
Method, has four stages :
1. Preliminary observation, either by simple appeal
to some fact of ordinary experience ; or by more
complex processes, as in the Methods of In
ductive Observation and Experiment.
2. Formation of an hypothesis to explain the fact or
law which is thus disclosed.
3. Deduction according to the first figure : the hypo
thesis being treated as a general principle from
which conclusions are drawn.