A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~440,000 words · 2,094 passages
Cite this work
- APAJohn Stuart Mill. (n.d.). A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-stuart-mill/a-system-of-logic-ratiocinative-and-inductive
- MLAJohn Stuart Mill. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-stuart-mill/a-system-of-logic-ratiocinative-and-inductive.
- ChicagoJohn Stuart Mill. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-stuart-mill/a-system-of-logic-ratiocinative-and-inductive.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Mill's treatise on induction: how a law is reached from cases, with the four methods of experimental inquiry — agreement, difference, residues and concomitant variations — that still carry his name.
Context and history
Published in 1843, it was Mill's first major book and the one that made his reputation. The sixth and last book extends the same demand to the 'moral sciences': it argues that society admits of a science, and it is the text where that claim is defended by argument rather than merely proclaimed.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
(and the author believes that they have much need of improvement) can only consist in performing more systematically and accurately operations with which, at least in their elementary form, the human intellect, in some one or other of its employments, is already familiar. In the portion of the work which treats of Ratiocination, the author has not deemed it necessary to enter into technical details which may be obtained in so perfect a shape from the existing treatises on what is termed the Logic of the Schools. In the contempt entertained by many modern philosophers for the syllogistic art, it will be seen that he by no means participates; though the scientific theory on which its defense is usually rested appears to him erroneous: and the view which he has suggested of the nature and functions of the Syllogism may, perhaps, afford the means of conciliating the principles of the art with as much as is well grounded in the doctrines and objections of its assailants. The same abstinence from details could not be observed in the First Book, on Names and Propositions; because many useful principles and distinctions which were contained in the old Logic have been gradually omitted from the writings of its later teachers; and it appeared desirable both to revive these, and to reform and rationalize the philosophical foundation on which they stood. The earlier chapters of this preliminary Book will consequently appear, to some readers, needlessly elementary and scholastic. But those who know in what darkness the nature of our knowledge, and of the processes by which it is obtained, is often involved by a confused apprehension of the import of the different classes of Words and Assertions, will not regard these discussions as either frivolous, or irrelevant to the topics considered in the later Books.…