The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... The distinction with which we are thus concerned is better described as that between Classification intended for special purposes and that which is intended for general purposes. There must be some purpose or aim presupposed in every arrangement of the kind in question, just as there must be one for the shape and size of a tool; and the determination of this purpose at once puts its stamp upon the consequent classification. It is perfectly optional on our part to select our purpose, and the purpose may be of the most various kinds; but, as soon as we have decided upon this, one particular arrangement is suggested as being more complete and convenient, and therefore more 'natural' than any other. A good illustration of the kind of distinction here in question is furnished by the common manuals of the Flora of any country or district. Take, for instance, that of Bentham. At the beginning of the work we find an elaborate classification, under the title of an Analytical Key, the sole guiding principle of which is so to arrange the plants that a person who has a specimen of one of these actually before him may be able to ascertain the name. At the end of the book we find a totally different arrangement, --the familiar alphabetical one, -- in which the determining motive is simply that a person who knows the name may be enabled to ascertain the characteristics of the plant. But the bulk of the book is of course arranged on a third, and again totally different kind of classification, of which no more compendious description can be given than that it best subserves the general purposes of study, speculative as well as practical, of the objects in question. Each of these arrangements is, in the strictest sense, what we must understand as a...