The Process of Inductive Inference (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Process of Inductive Inference

But what right have we to pass from particulars to uni versals? Aristotle seems to justify the procedure in two ways. The particular, he believes, arouses in the mind the universal. We perceive the particular, e. G., Callias, but perception includes the universal, e. G, man.3 That is, the perception of the particu lar arouses in our minds the idea of the universal, of the all. In the words of Thomas Taylor, a translator and commentator of Aristotle: Induction is so far subservient to the acquisi tions Of science, as it evocates into energy in the soul, those uni versals from which demonstration consists. For the universal,. Which is the proper Object Of science, is not derived from par ticulars, since these are infinite, and every induction Of them must be limited to a finite number. Hence the perception Of the all and the every is only excited, and not produced, by induc tion. 4 In other words the category of totality seems to be a function Of the mind that is aroused or excited by the perception Of particular things. The mind makes the leap from the part to the whole.

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