The logic of science Author:Aristotle Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: probability on any given problem, and of defending a tenet without inconsistency. We cannot always, for instance in the practical affairs of life, argue with ... more »scientific rigour, and even the scientific method by which we discover principles must differ from that by which we develope their consequences. Besides then the doctrine of Demonstration and of Scientific Induction, we require a theory to unfold all the possible kinds of argumentation and less rigorous methods of fortifying an opinion. The Aristotelian Dialectics must be distinguished from the Dialectics of Plato, who included under this name his Metaphysics or Philosophy, as well as the Aristotelian Dialectics. Now his Philosophy was a determinate science with a determinate province, whereas the latter is unscientific reasoning in any province whatsoever. It was very natural, however, to call them by the same name. Dialectics, as we shall see, or something like it, must always be employed by sciences that have to establish their first principles; for its great function is to examine hypotheses, and test their legitimacy by deduction of their consequences. In this respect it presents an antithesis to the Mathematical sciences, which rest on given principles, and have only to unfold them: and this is the function that, in speaking of Dialectics, Plato generally has in his eye. Philosophy presents the same contrast to the Deductive sciences; for at its outset it has no definite principles, and to fix them must employ a Dialectical method. There is a greater air of liberty and independence about both Dialectics and Philosophy: the sciences have their task imposed them: certain principles are rigorously prescribed from which they must not depart: whereas the office of Dialectics and Philosophy is the determination of princ...« less