The Debate between Whewell and Mill on the Nature of Scientific Induction

Publisher Summary This chapter describes Kepler example in a way that challenges Mill's explanation. It illustrates Whewell's description and discusses the tests of hypotheses. It explores the way Whewell-Mill debate can help identify fundamental limitations in the scope of Bayesian and Likelihoodist theories of evidence and confirmation. Whewell-Mill debate also helps to understand why sophisticated methods of induction have not been programmed to run automatically on a computer. For Whewell, the conceptual components of knowledge are the instruments that ultimately explain the way human knowledge is possible. They produce the colligations that can be confirmed by the consiliences of colligations, which serves to objectify the subject elements, making knowledge possible. The introduction of new conceptions in the colligation of facts is, therefore, a defining characteristic of induction. Whewell allowed Mill to center the debate on particular examples of induction such as Kepler's inference that Mars moves on an ellipse.

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