A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. I

CHAPTER XII. _Of the Explanation of Laws of Nature.

Chapter 2784 wordsPublic domain

§ 1. Explanation defined 518

2. First mode of explanation, by resolving the law of a complex effect into the laws of the concurrent causes and the fact of their coexistence 518

3. Second mode; by the detection of an intermediate link in the sequence 519

4. Laws are always resolved into laws more general than themselves 520

5. Third mode; the subsumption of less general laws under a more general one 524

6. What the explanation of a law of nature amounts to 526