Induction

Charts the historical development of induction and challenges contemporary understandings of the concept and its foundations.

The problem of induction continues to vex and beguile. How can we reliably draw universal conclusions from limited observations? In Induction, John P. McCaskey steps back and rethinks long-held assumptions, tracing the ideas of Socrates and Aristotle in ancient Greece to those of Karl Popper in the twentieth century.

This comprehensive account does not look at how people of the past answered the questions we ask today. Instead, it asks: How did they understand the very meaning of the words epagōgē in Greek, inductio in Latin, istiqrāʾ in Arabic, Induktion in German, and induction in English? McCaskey’s careful treatment of texts in their context dispels many long-standing myths, and importantly, he introduces us to a now-unfamiliar way to think about what induction is—a way in which there simply is no “problem of induction.” McCaskey reveals that the problem was one of our own making and that an accurate history may help us recover old ways—and thereby introduce new ways—to think about the whole idea. A must-read for philosophers, historians of ideas, and anyone interested in the scientific method.