ONT Re: Extension x Comprehension = Information
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| We have now seen how the mind is forced by the very nature
| of inference itself to make use of induction and hypothesis.
|
| But the question arises how these conclusions come to receive their
| justification by the event. Why are most inductions and hypotheses true?
| I reply that they are not true. On the contrary, experience shows that of
| the most rigid and careful inductions and hypotheses only an infinitesimal
| proportion are never found to be in any respect false.
|
| And yet it is a fact that all careful inductions are nearly true and
| all well-grounded hypotheses resemble the truth; why is that? If we
| put our hand in a bag of beans the sample we take out has perhaps not
| quite but about the same proportion of the different colours as the
| whole bag. Why is that?
|
| The answer is that which I gave a week ago. Namely, that there
| is a certain vague tendency for the whole to be like any of its
| parts taken at random because it is composed of its parts. And,
| therefore, there must be some slight preponderance of true over
| false scientific inferences. Now the falsity in conclusions is
| eliminated and neutralized by opposing falsity while the slight
| tendency to the truth is always one way and is accumulated by
| experience. The same principle of balancing of errors holds
| alike in observation and in reasoning.
|
| CSP, CE 1, page 470-471.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
|"The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis",
| Lowell Institute Lectures of 1866, pages 357-504 in:
|
|'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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