adjective
definition
Of, or relating to logical induction.
definition
Of, relating to, or arising from inductance.
definition
Introductory or preparatory.
definition
Influencing; tending to induce or cause.
Examples of inductive in a Sentence
How little this criticism was justified may be seen from the fact that Mill's inductive logic was the direct result of his aspirations after political stability as determined by the dominion of the wisest (Examiner letters).
The inductive enumeration is either of all cases or of some only.
The difficulty of connecting lightships and isolated lighthouses to the mainland by submarine cables, owing to the destructive action of the tides and waves on rocky coasts on the wll- shore ends, led many inventors to look for a way out of the difficulty by the adoption of some form of inductive Smith.
Cavendish and subsequently Faraday discovered this fact, and the latter gave the name " specific inductive capacity," or " dielectric constant," to that quality of an insulator which determines the charge taken by a conductor embedded in it when charged to a given potential.
In this case no current flows from the battery through the line or instruments, the whole action being inductive.
But an inductive and deductive treatment, both comprehensive and in due proportion, does not as yet (19to) exist, and awaits fuller external evidence.'
In his Westminster review of Whately's Logic in 1828 (invaluable to all students of the genesis of Mill's logic) he appears, curiously enough, as an ardent and brilliant champion of the syllogistic logic against highfliers such as the Scottish philosophers who talk of "superseding" it by "a supposed system of inductive logic."
These are apprehended solely by the mind, which may, however, be led to them by an inductive process.
On the whole, then, analogical, inductive and deductive inferences are not the same but three similar and closely connected processes.
It is not the primary inference of its own premises, but constantly converts analogical and inductive conclusions into its particular and universal premises.
Now, as an inductive combination of premises does not necessarily involve the inductive conclusion, induction normally leads, not to a necessary, but to a probable conclusion; and whenever its probable conclusions become deductive premises, the deduction only involves a probable conclusion.
In fact, analogical, inductive and deductive inferences, though different processes of combining premises to cause different conclusions, are so similar and related, so united in principle and interdependent, so consolidated into a system of inference, that they cannot be completely investigated apart, but together constitute a single subject of science.
Among the dialecticians, Socrates had used inductive arguments to obtain definitions as data of deductive arguments against his opponents, and Plato had insisted on the processes of ascending to and descending from an unconditional principle by the power of giving and receiving argument.
Mill in his Logic pointed out this defect, and without departing from Baconian principles remedied it by quoting scientific examples, in which deduction, starting from inductive principles, applies more general to less general universals, e.g.
It teaches us that scientific method is sometimes induction, sometimes deduction, and sometimes the consilience of both, either by the inductive verification of previous deductions, or by the deductive explanation of previous inductions.
From studying this succession of empirical logicians, we cannot doubt that sense, memory and experience are the real origin of inference, analogical, inductive and deductive.
But the combinations of premises in analogical and inductive inference, although the combination does not involve the conclusion, yet causes us to infer it, and in so similar a way that the science of inference is not complete without investigating all the combinations which characterize different kinds of inference.
Sense is the evidence of inference; directly of analogical and inductive, directly or indirectly of deductive, inference; and therefore, if logic refuses to include sensory beliefs among judgments, it will omit the fundamental constituents of inference, inference will no longer consist of judgments but of sensory beliefs plus judgments, and the second part of logic, the logic of judgment, the purpose of which is to investigate the constituents of inference, will be like Hamlet without the prince of Denmark.
Whately, on the other hand, proposed an inductive syllogism with the major suppressed, that is, instead of the minor premise above, he supposed a major premise, " Whatever belongs to A, B, C magnets belongs to all."
Lastly, Wundt's view is an interesting piece of eclecticism, for he supposes that induction begins in the form of Aristotle's inductive syllogism, S-P, S-M, M-P, and becomes an inductive method in the form of Jevons's inverse deduction, or hypothetical deduction, or analysis, M-P, S-M, S-P. In detail, he supposes that, while an " inference by comparison," which he erroneously calls an affirmative syllogism in the second figure, is preliminary to induction, a second " inference by connexion," which he erroneously calls a syllogism in the third figure with an indeterminate conclusion, is the inductive syllogism itself.
This is like Aristotle's inductive syllogism in the arrangement of terms; but, while on the one hand Aristotle did not, like Wundt, confuse it with the third figure, on the other hand Wundt does not, like Aristotle, suppose it to be practicable to get inductive data so wide as the convertible premise, " All S is M, and all M is S," which would at once establish the conclusion, " All M is P."
Wundt's point is that the conclusion of the inductive syllogism is neither so much as all, nor so little as some, but rather the indeterminate "M and P are connected."
It is noticeable that Wundt quotes Newton's discovery of the centripetal force of the planets to the sun as an instance of this supposed hypothetical, analytic, inductive method; as if Newton's analysis were a hypothesis of the centripetal force to the sun, a deduction of the given facts of planetary motion, and a verification of the hypothesis by the given facts, and as if such a process of hypothetical deduction could be identical with either analysis or induction.
The result is that both Sigwart and Wundt transform the inductive process of adducing particular examples to induce a universal law into a deductive process of presupposing a universal law as a ground to deduce particular consequences.
Hence induction cannot be reduced to Aristotle's inductive syllogism, because experience cannot give the convertible premise, " Every S is M, and every M is S "; that "All A, B, C are magnets " is, but that " All magnets are A, B, C " is not, a fact of experience.
It is not syllogism in the form of Aristotle's or Wundt's inductive syllogism, because, though starting only from some particulars, it concludes with a universal; it is not syllogism in the form called inverse deduction by Jevons, reduction by Sigwart, inductive method by Wundt, because it often uses particular facts of causation to infer universal laws of causation; it is not syllogism in the form of Mill's syllogism from a belief in uniformity of nature, because few men have believed in uniformity, but all have induced from particulars to universals.
Bacon alone was right in altogether opposing induction to syllogism, and in finding inductive rules for the inductive process from particular instances of presence, absence in similar circumstances, and comparison.
Hence also induction is a real process, because, when we know that this individual magnet attracts iron, we are very far from knowing that all alike do so similarly; and the question of inductive logic, how we get from some similars to all similars, remains, as before, a difficulty, but not to be solved by the fallacy that inference is identification.
It is in the Topics, 9 again, that we have hints at the devices of an inductive process, which, as dialectical, throw the burden of producing contradictory instances upon the other party to the discussion.
Thirdly we have the limiting cases of this in the inductive syllogism 5ui 7riu'mw, 7 a syllogism in the third figure concluding universally, and yet valid because the copula expresses equivalence, and in analogy 8 in which, it has been well said, instances are weighed and not counted.
Rather a scientific process, which as experiential may be called inductive, but which is in other regards deductive as syllogism, is set up in constrast to syllogism YvI.
It is inductive only in the sense that it is identical in purpose with the ascent from particulars.
We have Mill's inductive methods in the germ, though with an emphasis quite older than Mill's.
The apostles of inductive method had preached recourse to experience, but had meant thereby nature as a constituted order.
In Mill's inductive logic, the nominalistic convention has, through his tendency to think in relatively watertight compartment,s, 2 faded somewhat into the background.
And what Spinoza has to say of the requisites of definition and the marks of intellection makes it clear that insight comes with coherence, and that the work of method on the " inductive " side is by means of the unravelling of all that makes for artificial limitation to lay bare what can then be seen to exhibit nexus in the one great system.
This point of departure is noteworthy, as also is the treatment of the inductive syllogism as one in which the middle term is resoluble into a group or series (Reihe).
With this coheres his dictum, with its far-reaching consequences for the philosophy of induction, that " the logical justification of the inductive process rests upon the fact that it is an inevitable postulate of our effort after knowledge.that the given is necessary, and can be known as proceeding from its grounds according to universal laws."
Liard, Les Logiciens Anglais Contemporains (5th ed., 1907), deals only with the 19th-century inductive and formal-symbolic logicians down to Jevons, to whom the book was originally dedicated.
Starting with careful and accurate observations on facts concerning the mysterious properties of amber and the lodestone, Gilbert laid the foundations of modern electric and magnetic science on the true experimental and inductive basis.
An immediate deduction from Maxwell's theory was that in transparent dielectrics, the dielectric constant or specific inductive capacity should be numerically equal to the square of the refractive index for very long electric waves.
It is evident that the Socratic search for the essence by an analysis of instances - an induction ending in a definition - has a strong resemblance to the Baconian inductive method.
The inductive method, so far as exhibited in the Organum, is exemplified by an investigation into the nature of heat.
With regard to the first, it has been already pointed out that Bacon's induction or inductive method is distinctly his own, though it cannot and need not be maintained that the general spirit of his philosophy was entirely new.6 The value of the method is the separate and more difficult question.
The inductive formation of axioms by a gradually ascending scale is a route which no science has ever followed, and by which no science could ever make progress.
We do not think, indeed, that the notiones of which he speaks in any way correspond to what Whewell and Ellis would call " conceptions or ideas furnished by the mind of the thinker "; nor do we imagine that Bacon would have admitted these as necessary elements in the inductive process.
Eight varieties of such experiments are enumerated, and a comparison is drawn between this and the inductive method; " though the rational method of inquiry by the Organon promises far greater things in the end, yet this sagacity, proceeding by learned experience, will in the meantime present mankind with a number of inventions which lie near at hand."
He was also much interested in ancient weights and measures, and in 1875 published a work on Inductive Metrology.
Suppose we have an inductive and a non-inductive circuit in series, which is traversed by a periodic current, and that we desire to know the power being absorbed to the inductive circuit.
Blondlot and P. Curie afterwards suggested that a single electrometer could be constructed with two pairs of quadrants and a duplicate needle on one stem, so as to make two readings simultaneously and produce a deflection proportional at once to the power being taken up in the inductive circuit.