SUO: Re: Determination
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| The consideration of this imperfect datum leads us to make
| a fundamental observation; namely, that the problem how we
| can make an induction is one and the same with the problem how
| we can make any general statement, with reason; for there is
| no way left in which such a statement can originate except from
| induction or pure fiction. Hereby, we strike down at once all
| attempts at solving the problem as involve the supposition of
| a major premiss as a datum. Such explanations merely show
| that we can arrive at one general statement by deduction
| from another, while they leave the real question,
| untouched. The peculiar merit of Aristotle's
| theory is that after the objectionable portion
| of it is swept away and after it has thereby been
| left utterly powerless to account for any certainty
| or even probability in the inference from induction,
| we still retain these 'forms' which show what the
| 'actual process' is.
|
| And what is this process? We have in the apodictic conclusion,
| some most extraordinary observation, as for example that a great
| number of animals -- namely neat and deer, feed only upon vegetables.
| This proposition, be it remarked, need not have had any generality; if
| the animals observed instead of being all 'neat' had been so very various
| that we knew not what to say of them except that they were 'herbivora' and
| 'cloven-footed', the effect would have been to render the argument simply
| irresistable. In addition to this datum, we have another; namely that
| these same animals are all cloven-footed. Now it would not be so very
| strange that all cloven-footed animals should be herbivora; animals
| of a particular structure very likely may use a particular food.
| But if this be indeed so, then all the marvel of the conclusion
| is explained away. So in order to avoid a marvel which must in
| some form be accepted, we are led to believe what is easy to
| believe though it is entirely uncertain.
|
| CSP, CE 1, page 179.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, "Harvard Lecture II, 1865",
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857-1866',
| Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
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