INTRODUCTION. ~A 



Jhe historian of its fortunes often begins his narration. So mticli of 

 Metaphysics is as necessary to us as such a portion of Geography is to 

 the Historian of an Empire ; and what has hitherto been said, is in 7 

 tended as a slight outline of the Geography of that Intellectual World, 

 of which we have here to study the History. 



The name which we have given to this History A HISTORY OF THE 

 INDUCTIVE SCIENCES has the fault of seeming to exclude from the 

 rank of Inductive Sciences those which are not included in the His- 

 tory ; as Ethnology and Glossology, Political Economy, Psychology. 

 This exclusion I by no means wish to imply ; but I could find no other 

 way of compendiously describing my subject, which was intended to 

 comprehend those Sciences in which, by the observation of facts and 

 the use of reason, systems of doctrine have been established which are 

 universally received as truths among thoughtful men ; and which may 

 therefore be studied as examples of the manner in which truth is to 

 be discovered. Perhaps a more exact description of the work would 

 have been, A History of the principal Sciences hitherto established by 

 Induction. I may add that I do not include in the phrase " Inductive 

 Sciences," the branches of Pure Mathematics (Geometry, Arithmetic, 

 Algebra, and the like), because, as I have elsewhere stated (Phil. Ind. 

 Sc.j book ii. c. 1), these are not Inductive but Deductive Sciences. 

 They do not infer tru% theories from observed facts, and more general 

 from more limited laws : but they trace the conditions of all theory, 

 the properties of space and number ; and deduce results from ideas 

 without the aid of experience. The History of these Sciences is briefly 

 given in Chapters 13 and 14 of the Second Book of the Philosophy 

 just referred to. 



I may further add that the other work to which I refer, tho Philos- 

 ophy of the Inductive Sciences, is in a great measure historical, no less 

 than the present History. That work contains the history of the 

 Sciences so far as it depends on Ideas ; the present work contains the 

 history so far as it depends upon Observation. The two works resulted 

 simultaneously from the same examination of the principal writers on 

 science in all ages, and may serve to supplement each other. 



