On certain modified forms assumed by the inductive process in different sciences : being an attempt to elucidate and extend some doctrines of the Novum organum / by Robert Mortimer Glover.

  • Robert Mortimer Glover
Date:
1837
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On certain modified forms assumed by the inductive process in different sciences : being an attempt to elucidate and extend some doctrines of the Novum organum / by Robert Mortimer Glover. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    statement. Thus, to take two examples differing in some re- spects from each other ; the series of laws composing the New- tonian doctrine of gravitation, and the generic terms of the me- thod of natural families of plants, present laws expressing generally, in the one case, the fact, that matter, in separate masses, and within certain observed limits, has been found en- dued with the property of gravitation,*—and in the other, that in certain groups of plants, the individuals resembling one another in form, do also agree in respect of medicinal and cu- linary virtues. Subordinate to the great logical characters of physical laws, there are other characters of a physical, or a metaphysical kind, which, not being all common to such expressions, but some of them peculiar to particular laws, serve to distinguish those. The chief of these characters depend upon the relations pre- served between properties connected in laws, in time, and in space. Characters deduced from such relations, may be termed metaphysical: their existence was clearly pointed out by Dr Brown. The physical characters belonging to laws are very various; and in this inquiry may be considered accidental or contingent. A law, stating that the properties to which it applies pre- serve a relation one to another, so that the presence of none is antecedent to the appearance of the others, is an expression like the description of a natural family, or the theory of the circu- lation reduced to its utmost simplicity. For as, in this latter case, it is only stated that the performance of the circulation of the blood is a function essentially connected with a peculiar structure,—the prior presence, whether of structure or function, is left undetermined. But where one property precedes ano- ther in the order of time—one being a uniform antecedent, and the other a uniform consequent, i. e„ when this order is found to occur regularly in certain contingent physical circumstances, —the law is then one of cause and effect. Since the phenome- na of gravitation are now found to be consequent upon the re- * Dr Brown first shewed, in his usual forcible manner, that the law of gra- vity could not be extended with logical propriety or physical certainty, beyond observed limits. See sect. 0, p. 177 of the 1st vol. of his Lectures, Cvo ed., 1H20.
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