Towards a Non-Inductivist Logic of Induction

Abstract

According to the old Aristotelian dictum, one can have knowledge only of the general. In the spirit of this epistemological tradition, philosophers have often emphasized that the proper subject-matter of science includes only those aspects of the world which are, in some sense, invariant, uniform, or regular.¹ While the Ancient thinkers were apt to find these uniformities in the unchanging ‘forms’ or ‘essences’ of particular things, the founders of modern natural science sought them in the invariant relations or functional dependences between things and events.² A common tenet of these views is that science proper studies invariable uniformities which can be expressed by universal laws. It is also generally thought that these laws are explained by more comprehensive and general theories employing characteristic theoretical concepts and postulates. Thus, all genuine scientific knowledge, as it is expressed in theories and laws, should be stated in universal form.