Publisher Summary The word “induction” and its cognates in other languages, of which for current purposes the most important is Latin “inductio,” have a complex semantic history. This chapter presents the remarks about induction that are extracted from the writings of authors who were primarily concerned with other matters and for whom inductive reasoning was a matter of minor importance. Also there have been philosophers who have discussed the problems of inductive inference without using the word induction. In context to ancient world, the chapter describes the remarks of Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic and Greek accounts, and Roman philosophy. In context to middle ages, it illustrates Arabic accounts, Latin West, and Renaissance. Many of the most original and creative philosophers of the 17th and early 18th century had little or nothing to say about induction. Even in the modern world, a philosopher is not required to deal with induction at any length—or indeed at all.

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A note on A ristotelian epagōgē

Induction before Hume

The eco-cognitive model of abduction

and formal and moved incrementally to the more concrete and practical: Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophistical Refutations, and Rhetoric. The Neoplatonist Porphyry's Introduction (Isogoge) prefaced the collection. As we have seen, epagoge is not discussed evenly throughout the corpus. It is not mentioned in the Isogoge and only once in the Categories and On Interpretation. In the next work, the Prior Analytics, the only substantive appearances of epagoge are at the end of the second book. The Posterior Analytics includes several comments, though many rather ambiguous. The primary and least ambiguous of Aristotle's treatments appear in the last three works, especially the Topics and Rhetoric. Now in both the Latin and the Arabic traditions, study of the Organon fell off back to front. The works placed first in the Organon remained available and studied. The final two were 42 Book V of the Topics may fruitfully be compared to Book 2 of Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (London 1620). 372 john P. McCaskey soon dropped. Aristotle's Topics was supplanted by Boethius' De Topicis Differentiis. In both the East and West, the Posterior Analytics fell into disuse under the influence of theological censure. Before it was completely replaced by Boethius' On Categorical Syllogisms, a scholar who got to the end of the Prior Analytics was advanced indeed. Thus, nearly the first mention of epagoge that even an advanced thinker would encounter would be that troublesome 'Induction, then that is, a deduction from induction is deducing one extreme to belong to the middle through the other extreme'. It is only natural that such a reader would conclude that induction is a kind of inference that can be cast as a deduction. In the West in fact, this is what he would find in the works of Boethius and in both East and West what he would find in the Neoplatonic commentaries of the fifth-century Alexandrians. In Europe the medieval rediscovery of Aristotle and discovery of Aristotelian Arabic commentary had no effect on conceptions of induction. Induction remained a kind of syllogism made good by complete enumeration. The Arabic commentators and the Latin Scholastics concurred. Prior Analytics II 23 remained the definitive treatment, inconsistencies between it and other passages ignored or explained away, and Boethius' alternate to Aristotle's Topics the standard work on that subject. Jean Buridan in the fourteenth century was the first to challenge the eight-hundred-year-old consensus and to draw attention to an alternate conception of induction. Unfortunately when his Summulae got published, his revolutionary views on induction were not included. Finally, humanists such as Lorenzo Valla and Rudolph Agricola in the fifteenth century rediscovered with a vengeance Aristotle's Topics and the writings of Cicero. This last presented induction much as I have described it above. In 1542, in his commentary on the Topics, the influential Paduan writer Agostino Nifo reported there to be great disagreement about what induction is. Even if it once was, what induction . 1 b . 43 is, was no anger o v1ous. The dominant view since late antiquity has been that Prior Analytics II 23 is Aristotle's most definitive treatment of induction and that the conventional reading of that chapter an accurate presentation of his view. But a fresh and fuller look at the chapter and Aristotle's mentions of epagoge throughout the corpus suggest future research into Aristotelian induction indeed into conceptions of induction throughout 43 Again, for details on this history, see John P. McCaskey, 'Regula Socratis: The Rediscovery of Ancient Induction in Early Modern England'. Freeing Aristotelian Epagoge from Prior Analytics II 23 373 history should be freed from the long-standing constraints of misreading the text, function, and import of Prior Analytics II 23. Bibliography Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship 900 East Hamilton Avenue, Suite 100 Campbell, CA 95070 mccaskey@anthemfoundation.org Aristotle. Eudemian Ethics. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1938. ___ .'Metaphysics'. Translated by W. D. Ross. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKean, 689-934. New York: Random House, 1941. ___ . On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Translated by George A. Kennedy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. ___ . 'Physics'. Translated by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKean, 218-397. New York: Random House, 1941. __ .Posterior Analytics. Translated by Jonathan Barnes. Second ed, Clarendon Aristotle Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. ___ . Prior Analytics. Translated by Robin Smith. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett,

Freeing Aristotelian Epagōgē from Prior Analytics II 23

Aristotle claims that we grasp the universal first principles of science by abstraction. Among the first principles he includes universal concepts, axioms, and postulates. The intellect (nous ) in us intuits them directly. It can err not in intuiting them but in describing and identifying them. The intellect gains access to these universal principles by making inductions on sense perceptions, where they are contained confusedly in a disorganized, routed state. Induction is a type of abstraction where something more primary (and often more general) is abstracted from something less so. Via a series of inductions a hierarchy of universals is constructed. The hierarchy ends with the ultimate abstraction, mathematical objects . These have a relational structure but are treated as if they are subjects in their own right. Propositional first principles can be obtained by reading them off of the hierarchy, just as information can be read off of a map.

The Process of Abstraction

Ancient Greek word for a type of wisdom or intelligence

A note on A ristotelian epagōgē

Citations

Induction before Hume

The eco-cognitive model of abduction

Freeing Aristotelian Epagōgē from Prior Analytics II 23

The Process of Abstraction

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