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Updated: May 13, 2025
Mill, "which, from the proved inapplicability of direct methods of observation and experiment, remains to us as the main source of the knowledge we possess, or can acquire, respecting the conditions and laws of recurrence of the more complex phaenomena, is called, in its most general expression, the deductive method, and consists of three operations: the first, one of direct induction; the second, of ratiocination; and the third, of verification."
There is no special reason, then, for astonishment at the coolness with which she sets herself up one moment as a "deductive creature," as one who attains the highest flights of knowledge by intuition rather than by reason, and the next poses herself as the one specially rational being in her household, and waits patiently till her husband is reasonable too.
Such is our creed. We are more sure of Truth by the so-called deductive than by the so-called inductive ladder, and it was not without meaning that she was represented as dwelling at the bottom of a well, for she is more surely reached by descending to her abode from the so-called abstract, than by climbing with our feet on the slippery concrete.
Why may we not consider the several "steps" of the inductive lesson as occurring in a definite and mutually exclusive sequence? In what respect is the procedure in a deductive lesson like that which you follow in an inductive lesson? Show how verification is an important element in both inductive and deductive lessons.
I cannot hope that it does, for Julius Sachs, than whom no one appears to have more carefully considered the subject, says, at page 677 of the recently published English translation of his textbook of botany, that "although the movements of water in plants have been copiously investigated and discussed for nearly two hundred years, it is nevertheless still impossible to give a satisfactory and deductive account of the mode of operation of these movements in detail."
In statistics, it is evident that empirical laws may sometimes be traced; and the tracing them forms an important part of that system of indirect observation on which we must often rely for the data of the Deductive Science. The process of the science consists in inferring effects from their causes; but we have often no means of observing the causes, except through the medium of their effects.
It is hardly necessary again to repeat that, as in every other deductive science, verification a posteriori must proceed pari passu with deduction a priori.
Whether Mr. Buckle fully comprehended the real nature of the Science toward which he was aiming; whether he entirely appreciated the radical and important change which its discovery would necessarily introduce into our Methods of Investigation; whether he saw that it would be the inauguration of a true Deductive Mode of reasoning, which would enable us to advance with incredible rapidity and certainty into the arcana of those departments which he was then obliged to explore with the most tedious research, the most plodding patience, and the most destructive intellectual tension, in order to accumulate a limited array of Facts, is somewhat doubtful.
So stated, the distinction is as follows: In setting forth his view of life, the realist follows the inductive method of presentment, and the romantic follows the deductive method. The distinction between inductive and deductive processes of thinking is very simple and is known to all: it is based upon the direction of the train of thought.
May we not say then, that the deductive method elucidates this vexed question in physiology; while at the same time our argument collaterally exhibits the limits within which the deductive method is applicable.
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