NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION. 



A HISTORY OF THE INDUCTIVE SCIENCES. This title has 

 the fault of seeming to exclude from the rank of Inductive 

 Sciences those which are not included in the History ; 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 sub- 

 ject, 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 uni- 

 versally 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 Sci- 

 ences," the branches of Pure Mathematics, (Geometry, 

 Arithmetic, Algebra, and the like,) because, as I have 

 elsewhere stated (Phil. Ind. Sc., B. n. c. 1), these are 

 not Inductive but Deductive Sciences : they do not infer 

 true 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 Chapter 13 of 

 the Book just referred to. 



(A.) p. 7. The points belonging to the Philosophy of 

 the Sciences, which are briefly noticed in this Introduction, 



