A new logic / by Charles Mercier.

  • Mercier, Charles Arthur, 1852-1919.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A new logic / by Charles Mercier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    63/458 (page 31)
    time introduce a reminder that the term is missing, and needs to be supplied, by putting in place of the missing term the relative ‘ what.’ By this means we obtain the incomplete proposition, What is B. Similarly, if B is missing, we can throw the incom- plete proposition into the form, A is what. These are manifestly questions, and should be characterised as questions by the addition of the interrogation sign; and we then get the incomplete propositions, What is B ?, A is what ?, which at once preserve the form of the proposition, and remind us that the proposition is incomplete and clamours for completion. If the missing element is the relational link that connects the terms together in a relation, we cannot thus supply a dummy for it. A what B ? is not English, and though no logician is ever deterred, by the hideousness of an expression, from adopting it into his scheme, it behoves A New Logic to show a better way, and aspire to better things. Remembering, however, that the incomplete proposition may be put in the form of a question, we can, when the link of the relation is missing, throw the incomplete proposition into the form ‘ Is A, B ? ’ or ‘ What is the relation between A and B ? ’ These are ways in which the missing element of a problem may be supplied by a dummy, so that the form of the proposition may be preserved; but these are not the only ways. We may substi- tute for the missing element the sign of the unknown ; and may express the incomplete proposition X is B ; A x B, or A is X, which are the three forms that a Problem may assume. The incomplete proposition is, in Logic, a Problem, and should be known as a problem ; and the Problem is the foundation of Material or Empirical Reasoning. The whole and only function of Empirical reasoning, or Induction, is to solve problems by dis- covering the element in them that is missing, and substituting the discovered element for the dummy element. Induction, as commonly understood in logical text books, is the discovery of causation, and the discovery of causation by the direct appeal to experience. Induction, as I understand it, is the supply of the missing element in a Problem, whatever the missing element may be; and whether it refers to causation, or to any other of the thousand and one relations that we may desire to discover; and whether this element is supplied by the direct or by the indirect appeal to experience, the logical process is still a process of Induction.