Induction. (Gr. ἐπαγωγή.) The counter process to deduction. That is, a reasoning from the greater to the less, from the whole to the part, from the universal to the particular. Induction on the other hand leads from the particular up to the universal.
So far all is clear, but the word is used in different though related senses. It sometimes denotes the form of reasoning by which we thus ascend from particulars to universals, which is expounded by Aristotle,(1) sometimes the collection of examples, and the experiments by whose result we conceive ourselves warranted in doing this, and sometimes the result itself as a process of thought whereby we pass from the limited instances to an indefinite, or as men call it infinite, law, the process termed by P. Gratry transcendence.
In the sciences entitled Inductive the word is generally taken in a still greater breadth of meaning, and as the late Professor De Morgan truly observed of such induction, «its instruments are induction properly so called, separation of apparently related, but really distinct, particulars,—mathematical deduction, ordinary logic, &c. It is the use of the whole box of tools.» (2)
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(1) Analyt. Pr. II. 23.
(2) DE MORGAN, Formal Logic, pp. 215, 216.
