358 METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE 



Both solutions of the new problem which in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury supplant the old and seemingly self-evident presupposition, 

 appear accordingly embedded in the opposition between the ration- 

 alistic and empiristic interpretation of the origin and validity of our 

 knowledge, the same opposition that from antiquity runs through 

 the historical development of philosophy in ever new digressions. 



Even to-day the question regarding the meaning and the validity 

 of the causal connection stands between these contrary directions 

 of epistemological research; and the w r ays leading to its answer 

 separate more sharply than ever before. It is therefore more press- 

 ing in our day than it was in earlier times to find a basis upon which 

 we may build further epistemologically and therefore methodologic- 

 ally. The purpose of the present paper is to seek such a basis for the 

 different methods employed in the sciences of facts. 



As has already been said, the contents of our consciousness, which 

 are given us immediately in outer and inner perception, constitute 

 the raw material of the sciences of facts. From these various facts 

 of perception we derive the judgments through which we predict, 

 guide, and shape our future perception in the course of possible 

 experience. These judgments exist in the form of reproductive 

 ideational processes, which, if logically explicit, become inductive 

 inferences in the broader sense. These inferences may be said to be 

 of two sorts, though fundamentally only two sides of one and the 

 same process of thought; they are in part analogical inferences and 

 in part inductive inferences in the narrower sense. The former infers 

 from the particular in a present perception, which in previous per- 

 ceptions was uniformly connected with other particular contents of 

 perception, to a particular that resembles those other contents of per- 

 ception. In short, they are inferences from a particular to a particular. 

 After the manner of such inferences we logically formulate, for 

 example, the reproductive processes, whose conclusions run: "This 

 man whom I see before me, is attentive, feels pain, will die;" "this 

 meteor will prove to have a chemical composition similar to known 

 meteors, and also to have corresponding changes on its surface as 

 the result of its rapid passage through our atmosphere." The induct- 

 ive inferences in the narrower sense argue, on the contrary, from 

 the perceptions of a series of uniform phenomena to a universal, 

 which includes the given and likewise all possible cases, in which 

 a member of the particular content of the earlier perceptions is 

 presupposed as given. In short, they are conclusions from a partic- 

 ular to a universal that is more extensive than the sum of the given 

 particulars. For example: "All men have minds, will die;" "all 

 meteoric stones will prove to have this chemical composition and 

 those changes of surface." 



