Chapter 26

THE FOUR METHODS OF EXPERIMENTAL ENQUIRY.

Five canons may be laid down as the principles of experimental enquiry. The first is that of the Method of Agreement, viz.: _If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the circumstances agree is the cause or the effect of the given phenomenon._ The second canon is that of the Method of Difference, viz.: _If an instance in which the phenomenon occurs and an instance in which it does not occur have every circumstance in common, save one, and that one occurs only in the former, that one circumstance is the effect, or the cause, or a necessary part of the cause, of the phenomenon._

These two are the simplest modes of singling out from the facts which precede or follow a phenomenon, those with which it is connected by an invariable law. Both are methods of elimination, their basis being, for the method of agreement, that whatever can be eliminated _is not_, and for that of difference, that whatever cannot be eliminated _is_ connected with the given phenomenon by a law. It is only, however, by the method of difference, which is a method of artificial experiment (and by experiment we can introduce into the pre-existing facts a change perfectly definite), that we can, at least by direct experience, arrive with certainty at causes. The method of agreement is chiefly useful as preliminary to and suggestive of applications of the method of difference, or as an inferior resource in its stead, when, as in the case of many spontaneous operations of nature, we have no power of producing the phenomenon.

When we have power to produce the phenomenon, but only by the agency, not of a single antecedent, but of a combination, the method of agreement can be improved (though it is even then inferior to the direct method of difference) by a double process being used, each proof being independent and corroborative of the other. This may be called the Indirect Method of Difference, or the Joint Method of Agreement and Difference, and its canon will be: _If two or more instances in which the phenomenon occurs have only one circumstance in common, while two or more instances in which it does not occur have nothing in common save the absence of that circumstance, the circumstance in which alone the two sets of instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or a necessary part of the cause, of the phenomenon._

The fourth canon is that of the Method of Residues, viz.: _Subduct from any phenomenon such part as is known by previous inductions to be the effect of certain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomenon is the effect of the remaining antecedents._ This method is a modification of the method of difference, from which it differs in obtaining, of the two required instances, only the positive instance, by observation or experiment, but the negative, by deduction. Its certainty, therefore, in any given case, is conditional on the previous inductions having been obtained by the method of difference, and on there being in reality no remaining antecedents _besides_ those given as such.

The fifth canon is that of the Method of Concomitant Variations, viz.: _Whatever phenomenon varies in any manner whenever another phenomenon varies in some particular manner, is either a cause or an effect of that phenomenon, or_ (since they may be effects of a common cause) _is connected with it through some fact of causation._ Through this method alone can we find the laws of the permanent causes. For, though those of the permanent causes whose influence is local may be escaped from by changing the scene of the observation or experiment, many can neither be excluded nor even kept isolated from each other; and, therefore, in such cases, the method of difference, which requires a negative instance, and that of agreement, which requires the different instances to agree only in one circumstance, in order to prove causation, are (together with the methods which are merely forms of these) equally inapplicable. But, though many permanent antecedents insist on being always present, and never present alone, yet we have the resource of making or finding instances in which (the accompanying antecedents remaining unchanged) their influence is _varied_ and _modified_. This method can be used most effectually when the variations of the cause are variations of quantity; and then, if we know the absolute quantities of the cause and the effect, we may affirm generally that, at least within our limits of observation, the variations of the cause will be attended by similar variations of the effect; it being a corollary from the principle of the composition of causes, that more of the cause is followed by more of the effect. This method is employed usually when the method of difference is impossible; but it is also of use to determine according to what law the quantity or different relations of an effect ascertained by the method of difference follow those of the cause.

These four methods are the only possible modes of experimental enquiry. Dr. Whewell attacks them, first, on the ground (and the canon of ratiocination was attacked on the same) that they assume the reduction of an argument to formulæ, which (with the procuring the evidence) is itself the chief difficulty. And this is in truth the case: but, to reduce an argument to a particular form, we must first know what the form is; and in showing us this, Inductive Logic does a service the value of which is tested by the number of faulty inductions in vogue. Dr. Whewell next implies a complaint that no discoveries have ever been made by these four methods. But, as the analogous argument against the syllogism was invalidated by applying equally as against all reasoning, which must be reducible to syllogism, so this also falls by its own generality, since, if true against these methods, it must be true against all observation and experiment, since these must ever proceed by one of the four. And, moreover, even if the four methods were not methods of discovery, as they are, they would yet be subjects for logic, as being, at all events, the sole methods of Proof, which (unless Dr. Whewell be correct in his view that inductions are simply conceptions consistent with the facts they colligate) is the principal topic of logic.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Chap. IX. consists of 'Miscellaneous Examples of the Four Methods,' which cannot be well represented in an abridged form.