A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
AuthorJohn Stuart Mill
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Publication date
1843
Media typePrint

A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive is an 1843 book by English philosopher John Stuart Mill.

Overview

In this work, he formulated the five principles of inductive reasoning that are known as Mill's Methods. This work is important in the philosophy of science, and more generally, insofar as it outlines the empirical principles Mill would use to justify his moral and political philosophies.

An article in "Philosophy of Recent Times" has described this book as an "attempt to expound a psychological system of logic within empiricist principles.”

This work was important to the history of science, being a strong influence on scientists such as Dirac.[1][2] A System of Logic also had an impression on Gottlob Frege, who rebuked many of Mill's ideas about the philosophy of mathematics in his work The Foundations of Arithmetic.[3]

Mill revised the original work several times over the course of thirty years in response to critiques and commentary by Whewell, Bain, and others.

Introduction

Begins with a discussion of difficulty of a preliminary definition of what Logic is. Concludes with "Logic, then, is the science of the operations of the understanding which are subservient to the estimation of evidence"

Book One

This Book is headed "Of Names and Propositions".

Mill begins with a "simple" quotation from Thomas Hobbes which although simple contains the essence of what leads to the greater complexities there are in naming things and ideas.

Book Two

This book is headed "Of Inference, or Reasoning, in General".

Mill begins with the retrospect that we have concluded that propositions assert. We now move "to the peculiar problem of the Science of Logic, namely, how the assertions, of which we have analysed the import, are proved or disproved"

Book III

This book is headed "Of Induction"

The centrality of Induction to Mills System of Logic is emphasized by such statements as, "What Induction is, therefore, and what conditions render it legitimate, cannot but be deemed the main question of the science of logic ,the question which includes all others."

Book IV

This book is headed "Of Operations Subsidiary to Induction"

Mill writes that this book is needed because,

"The consideration of Induction, however, does not end with the direct rules for its performance. Something must be said of those other operations of the mind, which are either necessarily presupposed in all induction, or are instrumental to the more difficult and complicated inductive processes".

Editions

  • Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic, University Press of the Pacific, Honolulu, 2002, ISBN 1-4102-0252-6
  • System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive

Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation by JOHN STUART MILL BOOKS I-III AND APPENDICES [4]

  • System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive

Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation by JOHN STUART MILL BOOKS IV-VI AND APPENDICES [5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Farmelo, Graham (2009). The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius. Faber and Faber. ISBN 9780571222780.
  2. ↑ Cassidy, David C. (2010). "Graham Farmelo. The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom". Isis. University of Chicago Press. 101: 661. doi:10.1086/657209. Farmelo also discusses, across several chapters, the influences of John Stuart Mill...
  3. ↑ Frege, Gottlob (1980). The foundations of arithmetic; a logico-mathematical enquiry into the concept of number. Translated by Austin, J. L. (2nd ed.). Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0810106051. OCLC 650.
  4. ↑ https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-the-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-volume-vii-a-system-of-logic-part-i
  5. ↑ https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-the-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-volume-viii-a-system-of-logic-part-ii

Sources

  • Philosophy of Recent Times, ed. J. B. Hartmann (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), I, 14.
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