Inductivism

Lore & Background

The 'Baconian model' advises to observe nature, propose a modest law that generalizes an observed pattern, confirm it by many observations, venture a modestly broader law, and confirm that, too, by many more observations, while discarding disconfirmed laws. Newton's theory of universal gravitation resembled inductivism's paramount triumph. Immanuel Kant sought a middle ground between Hume's empiricism and rationalism, intuiting that necessity exists and that the mind has innate constants that ensure the empirically correct physical theory's universal truth. John Stuart Mill proposed five methods to discern causality, and Auguste Comte explicated positivism, which emphasizes predictions, confirming them, and laying scientific laws.

Reader's Guide

Inductivism was widely conceived as scientific method's ideal from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Even at the 21st century's turn, popular presentations of scientific discovery and progress naively, erroneously suggested it. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, inductivism succumbed to hypotheticodeductivism as scientific method's realistic idealization. Philosophers including Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Imre Lakatos, and Larry Laudan have all but unanimously rejected inductivism. By the 21st century's turn, inductivism's heir was Bayesianism. The logical positivists accepted hypotheticodeductivist theory origin but sought an inductive logic to objectively quantify a theory's confirmation by empirical evidence, a campaign that always failed. Inductivism's legacy persists in popular misunderstandings of scientific method, even as philosophers of science have largely moved to other frameworks such as inference to the best explanation.

Did You Know?

• David Hume identified multiple obstacles to inferring causality from experience, noting the formal illogicality of enumerative induction.
• John Stuart Mill proposed five methods to discern causality, how genuine inductivism purportedly exceeds enumerative induction.
• By the 21st century's turn, inductivism's heir was Bayesianism.