William Whewell's "Discoverer's Induction" (Part 2)

Previous post: William Whewell's "Discoverer's Induction" (Part 1)

The Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy

The purpose of the Philosophy was the determinations of both the nature and the conditions of human knowledge (Philosophy I, 16). His theory of induction was framed as a part of the full articulation of the dimensions and powers of knowledge. But before Whewell could present his theory of induction to the reader, he wanted them to wrap their heads around a foundational issue, a division of knowledge at the base of science, of philosophy and of human life itself. This was the dual nature of knowledge, which he termed the “fundamental antithesis of philosophy.”

Thoughts and Things

An “antithesis” is “a contrast or opposition between two things.” Whewell begins the discussion of this antithesis between thoughts and things in seemingly conflicting language:

I shall have to attempt to make this opposition sharper and stronger than it is usually conceived, and yet to shew that the distinction is far from being so clear and definite as it is usually assumed to be : I shall have to point the contrast, yet shew that the things which are contrasted cannot be separated : I must explain that the antithesis is constant and essential, but yet that there is no fixed and permanent line dividing its members. I may thus appear, in different parts of my discussion, to be proceeding in opposite directions, but I hope that the reader who gives me a patient attention will see that both steps lead to the point of view to which I wish to lead him. (Philosophy I, 16–17)

Though this antithesis takes many forms, its simplest form is also its most familiar form: the difference and opposition between thoughts and things.

Whewell explains that thoughts belong to us and happen within us as actions of our minds. Things, on the other hand, have an independent existence from us; while we make thoughts by thinking them, things simply are, acting on us and on our perceptual organs without us making them do so. He holds that thoughts and things are two indispensable aspects of human knowledge (Philosophy I, 17–18). “Without Thoughts, there could be no connexion; without Things, there could be no reality” (Philosophy I, 18; spelling and capitalization in the original).

The philosopher of science Margaret Morrison remarked that Whewell saw this division as a central issue in the field of philosophy, stating matter-of-factly that Whewell would frame it as philosophy’s ultimate problem. She describes the antithesis as:

[A] doctrine that describes both the union and division of the subjective and objective, theory and fact, thoughts and things, as well as ideas and sensations. Although these elements are united in experience, they are separable for the purposes of philosophical inquiry. (1997, 1)

To clarify the division as well as to show its pervasiveness in all types of knowledge, Whewell discusses the antithesis in a variety of seemingly conflicting pairs. He describes them as Necessary Truths and Experiential Truths, Deduction and Induction, Theories and Facts, Ideas and Sensations, Reflection and Sensation, Subjective and Objective, and as Matter and Form (Philosophy I, Ch. 2, passim).

Let’s go over each pair to understand what Whewell meant by this distinction.

Necessary Truths and Experiential Truths

Whewell likened this distinction to the philosophical distinction between necessary and contingent truths.

Necessary truths are those truths that must be so by the definitions of the terms involved or else a contradiction would exist. His predominant examples for these sorts of truths are the axioms and theorems of geometry, such as the theorem that parallelograms on the same base and between the same parallel lines have the same area (Philosophy I, 19).

Experiential truths are truths that happen to be so in reality as is, but they “could have been otherwise.” These are truths of experience, truths learned by observations of the world, such as the number of days in a lunar month, or that salt dissolves in water, the truths observed and collected in the material sciences. These truths are provisional, conditioned by the way that the world around us is. If things had been different, so would be our experiential truths. “If we had been placed in

another part of the solar system, our experiential truths respecting days, years, and the motions of the heavenly bodies, would have been other than they are, as we know from astronomy itself” (Philosophy I, 20).

Necessary truths are the results of our thoughts; Experiential truths are developed from our observations of and reasoning about things in the world around us.

Deduction and Induction

A deduction is a demonstration that reaches truths by reasoning from definitions and axiomatic statements to other claims that can be verified by rigorous proofs. He uses the examples of the geometrical principles we know from geometry and calculus and their deductive applications to the motions of the planets. “We begin with our own Thoughts, which supply us with Axioms to start from; and we reason from these, till we come to propositions which are applicable to the Things about us” (Philosophy I, 21).

With induction, the process generally goes in the opposite direction, with a different kind of reasoning involved. In induction, we start with things, observing them and making determinations of which conceptions best fit the observed phenomena. Whewell here takes as examples the inductive generalizations of the Sun’s and of the planets’ motions made respectively by Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 190–c. 120 B.C.; Astronomer, founder of Trigonometry), Johannes Kepler (1571–1630; Astronomer, Mathematician) and Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543; Mathematician, Astronomer). “In such cases, in which truths are obtained by beginning from observation of external things and by finding some notion with which the Things, as observed, agree, the truths are said to be obtained by Induction” (Philosophy I, 22).

In deduction, we reason “downwards”; in induction, we reason “upwards.” Necessary truths are proved by putting together their constituent parts. Experiential truths are proved when the relevant propositions are shown to agree with the observed and described facts. Deductions are the consequences of the relations amongst our thoughts. Inductions are those relations we discover amongst things that we study (Philosophy I, 22–23).

Theories and Facts

Theories are experiential truths of a general nature, while facts are those observed truths that we use to form theories. Facts are collected observations for the sake of building theories, while theories are designed to include and explain given sets of facts. Whewell states the relationship in a few different ways. He states that a “Theory is an Inductive Proposition, and the Facts are the particular observations from which, as I have said, such Propositions are inferred by Induction” (Philosophy I, 24).

He also remarks that this distinction between facts and theories implies the antithesis between thoughts and things. A true, validated theory can be restated as a thought which can be considered and analyzed independently from things (i.e., particular phenomena, observational instances) while still considered as agreeing with them. Facts are really integrations of thoughts with things in a way that makes it unthinkable to really consider them separately. “The Fact that the year consists of 365 days; the Fact that the month consists of 30 days, cannot be known to us, except we have the Thoughts of Time, Number and Recurrence” (Philosophy I, 24).

Lastly, Whewell makes one last connection between thoughts and things on one side and theories and facts on the other side. He notes that facts are thoughts that have become so familiar to us that we consider them as merely things without much consideration about the thoughts which give them meaning and context. Theories are organized and molded thoughts; we can think of them as distinct from facts, but because a theory agrees with and includes facts, we can’t think of them as truly independent (Philosophy I, 24).

Ideas and Sensations

Ideas and sensations are another pair that represent another form of the fundamental antithesis. Whewell regards these two words as the best-suited for distinctly separating the conflicting pairs (e.g. thoughts and things, deduction and induction, etc.).

Sensations are impressions that are caused by the connection between external things and our senses. In our perceptions of these things, we make sense of them through the abstract relations we’ve learned about, such as time, space, number, resemblance, and other relations. Ideas are these relations considered distinctly from the things that we apply them to (Philosophy I, 25).

Whewell here doesn’t believe that our perceptual system is sufficient for generating our full perceptual experience: ideas in some form are necessary for this purpose.

By the sense of sight we see various shades and colours and shapes before us, but the outlines by which they are separated into distinct objects of definite forms, are the work of the mind itself. And again, when we conceive visible things, not only as surfaces of a certain form, but as solid bodies, placed at

various distances in space, we again exert an act of the mind upon them.

(Philosophy I, 25)

Whewell provides more examples of this interplay of the senses and our ideas. We know that planets move about in orbital paths: we see the movement (over sufficient timespans) but the mind constructs the idea of an orbital path. We see the movement of a needle towards a magnet but our minds construct the ideas of a cause and of an attraction (and a force) that explain the observed effects. “And thus Ideas, as well as Sensations, necessarily enter into all our knowledge of objects” (Philosophy I, 25–27).

Reflection and Sensation

Reflection and sensation are one pair among others that Whewell introduces to help the reader better understand the opposition between ideas and sensations.

While he mentions philosopher John Locke’s (1632–1704) theory that all ideas arise from our sensations and reflections (c.f. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II), Whewell notes that his perspective on these ideas is very different from Locke's famed account. Locke focused on how our knowledge originated; Whewell wants to discuss how our knowledge is composed and to articulate its nature. For Locke, sensations are forms of knowledge we receive directly from external objects; reflections are the other form of knowledge, gained indirectly from our sensations. For Whewell, there is, “no Sensation without an act of the mind, and that the mind’s activity is not only [reflexively] exerted upon itself, but directly upon objects, so as to perceive in them connexions and relations which are not Sensations” (Philosophy I, 28).

Locke applies the term “reflection” to all parts of our knowledge not included under sensation, and (more-or-less) leaves it at that. Whewell seeks to assess and study these ideas, identifying them and determining each of their natures. Whewell goes on to explain more of the differences between his view of reflections and sensations as compared to Locke’s view. Locke compared his version of an idea to a “phantasm, notion, species”; Whewell counters that ideas are not notions, but rather are principles which grant our notions their elements of truth (Locke, 1689, Book I, Ch. I, sect. 8; (Philosophy I, 29). Perhaps most importantly, he disagrees with Locke's thesis that ideas are “objects of reflection” (1689, Book II, Ch. I, sect. 4). He holds that ideas are “Laws of Thought,” elements that are provided by the mind itself to create knowledge by combining with our sensations (Philosophy I, 28–29).

Subjective and Objective

According to Whewell, subjective and objective are versions of the fundamental antithesis that have had large impacts on modern German philosophies. In this division, a person’s mind is a subject and is the place where ideas come from; a person’s mind is directed towards and ultimately acts on external objects, the source of a person's sensations. The part of knowledge that belongs to a person's mind is the subjective element of knowledge; the part that comes to a person from external objects is the objective element of knowledge (Philosophy I, 29–30).

He points out other ways of expressing this distinction that has connections to the other opposing pairs he’s mentioned previously. We have the “internal and external sources of our knowledge ; of the world within and the world without us ; of Man and Nature.” In spite of this, Whewell would prefer to use “ideal and objective” to express the contrast between the mind’s ideas and the objects that the mind experiences around it (Philosophy I, 33).

Matter and Form

A very ancient but highly useful way of expressing the antithesis between ideas and sensations is by likening sensations to the matter and ideas to the form of human knowledge. Here, Whewell sounds very much like an Aristotelian. “For Matter and Form cannot by any means be detached from each other. All matter must have some form; all form must be the form of some material thing” (Philosophy I, 34). A piece of marble must be in the form of a sphere or a cube or some other shape; and a real spherical object must be made of some material, such as wood, iron or rubber.

However, he then immediately grants more abilities to our ideas than we would grant in our postmodern age. Arguing against some of the empiricists (e.g., Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)) who held that ideas are nothing more than transformed or converted sensations, Whewell rebuts that:

our sensations, of themselves, without some act of the mind, such as involves what we have termed an Idea, have no form. We cannot see one object without the idea of space; we cannot see two without the idea of resemblance or difference; and space and difference are not sensations. (Philosophy I, 36)

Sensations without ideas are literally "matter without form" to Whewell. Perceptions of things for him are sensations that have been informed by acts of the mind. Or, as he puts it at the end of this section: “ideas are not transformed, but informed sensations” (Philosophy I, 36–37).

Conclusion

Whewell has more to say about “the fundamental antithesis in philosophy” and perhaps another post about him can cover what hasn’t been mentioned here. Understanding Whewell’s account of induction and of the nature of knowledge led us into a dive deep into what he believed to be philosophy’s central, fundamental issue: the opposition—and inseparability—in knowledge between thoughts and things, ideas and sensations, deduction and induction, and other such conflicting pairs of terms. With a firmer grasp on what he means by these terms, an investigation into Whewell’s theory of inductive reasoning can truly commence. Whewell’s “Discoverer’s Induction” will be the subject of subsequent parts in this series.

References

Locke, J. (1824). The works of John Locke in nine volumes (12th ed., vol. 1). London: Rivington.  
              [Online] Retrieved from: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/761 (Original work, An Essay 
              Concerning Human Understanding, published 1689)

Morrison, M. (1997). Whewell on the ultimate problem of philosophy. Studies in History and

Philosophy of Science [Great Britain], 28(3), 417-437. Retrieved from:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/

1-s2.0-S0039368196000283/first-page-pdf

Whewell, W. (1847). Philosophy of the inductive sciences, founded upon their

               history (2nd ed.). London: John Parker.

Next posts: William Whewell's "Discoverer's Induction" (Part 3)
William Whewell's "Discoverer's Induction" (Part 4) 
William Whewell's "Discoverer's Induction" (Part 5)
William Whewell's "Discoverer's Induction" (Part 6/Final Part)