Induction
Socrates to Popper
Induction
Socrates to Popper
Charts the historical development of induction and challenges contemporary understandings of the concept and its foundations.
The problem of induction continues to vex and beguile. How can we reliably draw universal conclusions from limited observations? In Induction, John P. McCaskey steps back and rethinks long-held assumptions, tracing the ideas of Socrates and Aristotle in ancient Greece to those of Karl Popper in the twentieth century.
This comprehensive account does not look at how people of the past answered the questions we ask today. Instead, it asks: How did they understand the very meaning of the words epagōgē in Greek, inductio in Latin, istiqrāʾ in Arabic, Induktion in German, and induction in English? McCaskey’s careful treatment of texts in their context dispels many long-standing myths, and importantly, he introduces us to a now-unfamiliar way to think about what induction is—a way in which there simply is no “problem of induction.” McCaskey reveals that the problem was one of our own making and that an accurate history may help us recover old ways—and thereby introduce new ways—to think about the whole idea. A must-read for philosophers, historians of ideas, and anyone interested in the scientific method.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Aristotle and Socrates: What Induction Is, Is Clear
Untangling Aristotelian Induction
“Deduction from Induction”
Socratic (and Aristotelian) Induction
Epicureans, Stoics, and Two Roman Orators
Galen’s Warning
2. Medieval Transmission: The Scholastic Conception
Induction’s First “Black Swan”
Neoplatonists of Alexandria
Translation, Mistranslation, and Transmission
Reunion of Latin and Arabic Scholarship
High Scholasticism
3. The Renaissance: Rediscovery of Socratic Induction
John Buridan
The Topics
A Humanist Induction
The Sixteenth-Century Transition
4. 1620–1870: Baconian Induction
Baconian Induction in Theory
Baconian Induction in Practice: William Harvey
Baconian Induction in Practice: Robert Boyle
Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Baconian Induction
Last of the Baconians: William Whewell
5. The New Canon: Scholastic Induction, Revived and Twisted
Whately’s New Inductive Syllogism
Mill Pushes Induction Aside
What Induction Is, Is Contested
Jevons’s Synthesis: Induction Becomes Hypothesis Testing
Attempts to Defend the Uniformity Principle
Confirmation and Refutation
6. Induction in the Socratic Tradition: Practice and Theory
Socratic Induction in Practice
Socratic Induction in Theory
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and Guide to Citations
Bibliography
Index