An Aristotelian Account of Induction: Creating Something from Nothing

480 Pages·2009·2.86 MB·English

by  Louis Groarke

AN ARISTOTELIAN ACCOUNT OF INDUCTION
McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Ideas
Series Editor: Philip J. Cercone
1 Problems of Cartesianism 10 Consent, Coercion, and Limit:
Edited by Thomas M. Lennon, The Medieval Origins of
John M. Nicholas, and John W. Davis Parliamentary Democracy
Arthur P. Monahan
2 The Development of the Idea
of History in Antiquity 11 Scottish Common Sense
Gerald A. Press in Germany, 1768–1800:
A Contribution to the History
3 Claude Buffier and
of Critical Philosophy
Thomas Reid:
Manfred Kuehn
Two Common-Sense
Philosophers 12 Paine and Cobbett:
Louise Marcil-Lacoste The Transatlantic Connection
David A. Wilson
4 Schiller, Hegel, and Marx:
State, Society, and the 13 Descartes and the
Aesthetic Ideal of Ancient Greece Enlightenment
Philip J. Kain Peter A. Schouls
5 John Case and Aristotelianism in 14 Greek Scepticism:
Renaissance England Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient
Charles B. Schmitt Thought
Leo Groarke
6 Beyond Liberty and Property:
The Process of Self- 15 The Irony of Theology
Recognition in Eighteenth- and the Nature
Century Political Thought of Religious Thought
J.A.W. Gunn Donald Wiebe
7 John Toland: His Methods,
16 Form and Transformation:
Manners, and Mind
A Study in the Philosophy
Stephen H. Daniel
of Plotinus
8 Coleridge and the Inspired Word Frederic M. Schroeder
Anthony John Harding
17 From Personal Duties
9 The Jena System, 1804–5: towards Personal Rights:
Logic and Metaphysics Late Medieval and Early
G.W.F. Hegel Modern Political Thought,
Translation edited by c. 1300–c. 1650
John W. Burbidge and Arthur P. Monahan
George di Giovanni
Introduction and notes by
H.S. Harris
18 The Main Philosophical 28 Enlightenment
Writings and the Novel Allwill and Community:
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi Lessing, Abbt, Herder, and the
Translated and edited by Quest for a German Public
George di Giovanni Benjamin W. Redekop
19 Kierkegaard as Humanist: 29 Jacob Burckhardt and
Discovering My Self the Crisis of Modernity
Arnold B. Come John R. Hinde
20 Durkheim, Morals, 30 The Distant Relation:
and Modernity Time and Identity in Spanish-
W. Watts Miller American Fiction
Eoin S. Thomson
21 The Career of Toleration:
John Locke, Jonas Proast, 31 Mr Simson’s Knotty Case:
and After Divinity, Politics, and Due
Richard Vernon Process in Early Eighteenth-
Century Scotland
22 Dialectic of Love:
Anne Skoczylas
Platonism in Schiller’s Aesthetics
David Pugh 32 Orthodoxy and
Enlightenment:
23 History and Memory
George Campbell in
in Ancient Greece
the Eighteenth Century
Gordon Shrimpton
Jeffrey M. Suderman
24 Kierkegaard as Theologian:
33 Contemplation
Recovering My Self
and Incarnation:
Arnold B. Come
The Theology of Marie-
25 Enlightenment and Dominique Chenu
Conservatism in Christophe F. Potworowski
Victorian Scotland:
34 Democratic Legitimacy:
The Career of
Plural Values
Sir Archibald Alison
and Political Power
Michael Michie
F.M. Barnard
26 The Road to Egdon
35 Herder on Nationality,
Heath: The Aesthetics
Humanity, and History
of the Great in Nature
F.M. Barnard
Richard Bevis
36 Labeling People:
27 Jena Romanticism and
French Scholars on Society, Race,
Its Appropriation of Jakob Böhme:
and Empire, 1815–1849
Theosophy – Hagiography –
Martin S. Staum
Literature
Paolo Mayer
37 The Subaltern Appeal to 44 The Canadian Founding:
Experience: Self-Identity, John Locke and Parliament
Late Modernity, and the Janet Ajzenstat
Politics of Immediacy
45 Finding Freedom: Hegel’s
Craig Ireland
Philosophy and the
38 The Invention of Journalism Ethics: Emancipation of Women
The Path to Objectivity and Beyond Sara MacDonald
Stephen J.A. Ward
46 When the French
39 The Recovery of Wonder: Tried to Be British:
The New Freedom Party, Opposition, and
and the Asceticism of Power the Quest for the Civil
Kenneth L. Schmitz Disagreement, 1814–1848
J.A.W. Gunn
40 Reason and Self-Enactment
in History and Politics: 47 Under Conrad’s Eyes:
Themes and Voices The Novel as Criticism
of Modernity Michael John DiSanto
F.M. Barnard
48 Media, Memory, and the
41 The More Moderate Side First World War
of Joseph de Maistre: David Williams
Views on Political Liberty
49 An Aristotelian Account
and Political Economy
of Induction:
Cara Camcastle
Creating Something
42 Democratic Society from Nothing
and Human Needs Louis Groarke
Jeff Noonan
43 The Circle of Rights Expands:
Modern Political Thought
after the Reformation, 1521
(Luther) to 1762(Rousseau)
Arthur P. Monahan
AN ARISTOTELIAN ACCOUNT
OF INDUCTION
Creating Something from Nothing
Louis Groarke
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2009
isbn 978-0-7735-3595-4 (cloth)
isbn 978-0-7735-3596-1 (paper)
Legal deposit second quarter 2009
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the
Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through
the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided
by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Funding has also been received from the University of St Francis Xavier.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of
the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.
We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government
of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development
Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Groarke, Louis
An Aristotelian account of induction: creating something from nothing /
Louis Groarke.
(McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of ideas; 49)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-7735-3595-4 (bnd)
isbn 978-0-7735-3596-1 (pbk)
1. Aristotle. 2. Induction (Logic). I. Title. II. Series: McGill-Queen’s studies
in the history of ideas; 49
b491.l8g76 2009 161 c2009-902359-8
Le Nouveau-né (The Newborn) by Georges de la Tour (1593–1652) was perhaps
intended as a nativity scene. It depicts a midwife holding a candle in front of a
mother holding a newborn in surrounding darkness. The pictorial elements
of la Tour’s painting provide a physical parallel to the mental acts of creativity
discussed in this book. Ancient and medieval authors compared human intel-
ligence to a mental light that, proceeding from an unseen source, illuminated
the darkness of ignorance. And Socrates, of course, thought of the philoso-
pher as a midwife who attends to the student as he or she gives birth to a new
understanding. To think is to conceive. Just as the mother in the painting
grasps her newborn child, so the mind, in an act of immediate intellection or
insight, without logic, brings into the world something new and wondrous. (Im-
age courtesy of Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes.)
This book was typeset by Interscript in 10/12 Baskerville.
For Joseph A. Novak
oÊ δ¥ παιδεύovτες κα Æατρεύovτες κα διδάσκovτες (cid:2)γαθόv τι,
oâτoι δ¥ ταÃς ¦πιστήμαις εÛεργετoØσιv.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, “Plato,” bk 3, ch.96
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Contents
Acknowledgments xiii
1 A New (Old) Theory of Induction 3
2 Before and after Hume 22
3 A “Deductive” Account of Induction 95
4 Five Levels of Induction 156
5 Moral Induction 226
6 Complete Syllogistic: The Hamiltonian Notation 254
7 A History of Intuitive Understanding 280
8 Creativity: The Art of Induction 325
9 Where Science Comes to an End 363
Bibliography 431
Index 451