"Deductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the first part of this argument—that which is directed against the deductive philosophy of the Unconditioned—Mr. Mill manifests the same want of acquaintance with its meanings, and with the previous history of the question; which he had before exhibited in his attack on Sir W. Hamilton. He begins by finding fault with the definition of the Absolute, which Mr. ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... energetic in expression, reduced to those short aphorisms which leave much to the reader's acuteness and yet save his labour, not often obscure, and never wearisome, an evident generalisation of long experience, without pedantry, without method, without deductive reasonings, yet wearing an appearance at least of profundity; they delight the intelligent though indolent man of the world, and must be read with some admiration by the philosopher . . . . yet they bear witness to the ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... animal being a combination of the vertebrate and the mollusc, so utterly fantastic and abnormal, that (had not the family been amongst the commonest, from the earliest geological epochs) it would have seemed, to man's deductive intellect, a form almost as impossible as the mermaid, far more impossible than the sea- serpent. These, and perhaps a few handsome sea-slugs and bivalve shells, you will be pretty sure to find: ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... objects of the senses, becomes fixed in the mind, then does one succeed in attaining to Brahma, for it is there that the mind with the understanding withdrawn into it can possibly be extinguished. Brahma is not an object of touch, or of hearing, or of taste, or of sight, or of smell, or of any deductive inference from the Known. Only the Understanding (when withdrawn from everything else) can attain to it. All objects that the mind apprehends through the senses are capable of being withdrawn into the mind; the mind can be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... never got out of his deductive head that some day she would learn to love him. Had he known the temptation, the despair that was hers, he would not have been so quietly deliberate. But she had never told him. In fact, he had loved her from ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... moiety of the German biologists were orthodox at any price, and the other moiety as distinctly heterodox. The latter were evolutionists, a priori, already, and they must have felt the disgust natural to deductive philosophers at being offered an inductive and experimental foundation for a conviction which they had reached by a shorter cut. It is undoubtedly trying to learn that, though your conclusions may be all right, your reasons for ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... "You see I'm going to imbibe my information by the deductive rather than the excavative process," he ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... "never existed. His marvelous feats are not possible in real life, Cleggett. But the deductive method which he pretended to use—mind you, I ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... necessary result of human minds turned to the consideration of the Christian facts. But it makes all the difference which end you start from, the facts or the theory: whether your method is a posteriori or a priori; inductive or deductive; scientific or obscurantist. And Christianity follows the scientific method of starting with the facts. In this lies the justification of its claim to be a religion at once universal and life-giving. It is universal because facts are the common property ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... than Heldon Foyle the danger of jumping to conclusions. Inferences, however clever, however sound they may seem when they are drawn, are apt to lead one astray. The detective who habitually used the deductive method would spend a great deal of his time exploring blind alleys. Yet Foyle, with the unostentatious Maxwell at his right hand, hurried in the direction of Berkeley Square with a hope that his theory might ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... Renaissance and the Reformation a revival of interest in the classics produced a reaction against mediaevalism, and in time fastened a curriculum upon the universities that was composed mainly of the ancient languages, mathematics, and a deductive philosophy and theology. In the nineteenth century there began a criticism of the classical curriculum. It was declared that such a course of study was narrow and antiquated, that new subjects, such as history, the modern ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... scrupulous in the use of anesthetics, and void of all passion except the passion of pity for a disease-ridden world. The really scientific investigator answers that the question cannot be settled by hysterical protestations, and that if the vivisectionist rejects deductive reasoning, he had better clear his character by his own ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... logical deductions, and it hangs together with a certain air of reality, such as we like to look for in a host of "transformist" arguments which are put forward as irrefutable. Well, I make a present of my deductive theory to whosoever desires it, and without the least regret; I do not believe a single word of it, and I confess my profound ignorance of the origin of the twofold ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... have imitated its modern allies, the Sloths, in the feat of climbing, back downwards, amongst the trees. It is clear, therefore, that the Megathere sought its sustenance upon the ground; and it was originally supposed to have lived upon roots. By a masterly piece of deductive reasoning, however, Professor Owen showed that this great "Ground-Sloth" must have truly lived upon the foliage of trees, like the existing Sloths—but with this difference, that instead of climbing amongst the branches, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... Benson had circulated the reappearance of the White Lady of the Shrieking Pit in order to keep the villagers away from the place where the stolen money was hidden. Mr. Cromering had been much impressed—he said so—with the logical skill and masterly deductive powers by which Colwyn had reconstructed the hidden events of the night of the murder, like an Owen reconstructing the extinct moa from a single bone, but he was loath to accept that part of the theory which seemed to throw doubt on the ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... most anxious that Cuvier's method of comparative anatomy should acquire rights of citizenship among metaphysicians, and, so, progress from regions physical to regions psychological on its own inductive and deductive foundation. "Otherwise," they thought, "psychology will be unable to move forward a single step, and may even obstruct every other branch of Natural History." Instances have not been wanting of physiology poaching on the preserves of purely metaphysical and abstract knowledge, all the time ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... most Jewish philosophers he is synthetic rather than analytic, believing in intuition and distrusting the discursive reason, careless of physical science and soaring into religious metaphysics. Again, like most Jewish philosophers, he is deductive, starting with a synthesis of all in the Divine Unity, and making no fresh inductions from phenomena. It has been said that, though Philo was a philosopher and a Jew, yet Saadia was the first Jewish philosopher. But Philo's philosophical ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... do wish he were a Churchman, he is such a thoughtful, clever fellow—he says prejudice, imperfect induction, a wrong application of deductive logic, and one-sided interpretation, down't you know, literal, figurative, and all that sort of thing, are causes of ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... for the most part, absolute generality are substituted for one another, and the results stand for one fact as well as for another, in disregard of the worth of the particular in the scheme of nature. For the same reason, deductive logic is not a good discipline for these students; empirical psychology, or political economy, is a better introduction to the moral sciences for them when they reach the high school. This explains what was meant above in the remark as to the ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... complexity of the data available in geology tend in themselves toward generalizations in teaching—toward the deductive rather than the inductive method. A certain amount of generalization is desirable, but its over-emphasis develops bad habits of mind on the part of the student, and requires radical readjustment of his ideas in subsequent field investigations. To retain a proper emphasis ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... sleuth all right, all right! It's a home-run every time when you get your deductive theories unlimbered. Yes, George; the stage it is. I'm an actorine—one of the pony ballet in The Island of Girls at the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... more sure of Truth by the so-called deductive than by the so-called inductive ladder, and it was not without meaning that she was represented as dwelling at the bottom of a well, for she is more surely reached by descending to her abode from the so-called abstract, than by ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... held it in his hand when, having been released under nominal bond and attended by certain sympathizing friends, he walked across town from the county building to his home on Clay Street. That fact, too, was subsequently remembered and added to other details to make a finished sum of deductive reasoning. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... much a priori knowledge, whether in man or beast; but one does find some little in the beginnings of, and throughout the development of, every habit, at the commencement of which, and on every successive improvement in which, deductive and inductive methods are, as it were, fused. Thus the effect, where we can best watch its causes, seems mainly produced by a desire for a definite object—in some cases a serious and sensible desire, in others an idle ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... 2. DEDUCTIVE REASONING. Deductive reasoning is the method of demonstrating the truth of a particular statement by showing that some general principle, which has previously been established or which is admitted to be true, applies to it. A stranger ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... narrow and deductive manner of the Middle Ages," replied the Professor, calmly, "but even upon your own basis I will illustrate my point. We are up in the sky. In your religion and all the religions, as far as I know (and I know everything), the sky is made the symbol of everything ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... to the fact that he assumed nothing; but merely ran down each clew quickly yet painstakingly until he had a foundation of fact upon which to operate. His theory was that the simplest way is always the best way and so he never befogged the main issue with any elaborate system of deductive reasoning based on guesswork. Burton never guessed. He assumed that it was his business to KNOW, nor was he on any case long before he did know. He was employed now to find Abigail Prim. Each of the several crimes committed the previous night might or might ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... appendages to the adaptive: 3rd, that, consequently, natural selection is the only possible cause of modification, whether adaptive or non-adaptive. Here again, therefore, we must observe that none of these sweeping generalizations can possibly be justified by deductive reasoning from the theory of natural selection itself. Any attempt at such deductive reasoning must necessarily end in circular reasoning, as I shall likewise show in the second volume, where this whole "question of utility" will be thoroughly ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... my late paper, a day or two ago sent off to London, it is merely mathematical and deductive. I ventured, indeed, to call it the 'Mecanique Analytique' of Lagrange, 'a scientific poem'; and spoke of Dynamics, or the Science of Force, as treating of 'Power acting by Law in Space and Time.' In other respects it is as unpoetical and unmetaphysical ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... deductive mind. He was objective and concrete. Believe me or not, he was paid an excellent wage by the municipality to prevent people like me, who sit up at night, from doing mischief in the harbour. When I had come to an end of his politico-economic scheme—the main lines of which were so clear ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... certainty, but, in his 'Principes de Philosophie,' indicated where the goal of physical science really lay. However, Descartes was an eminent mathematician, and it would seem that the bent of his mind led him to overestimate the value of deductive reasoning from general principles, as much as Bacon had underestimated it. The progress of physical science has been effected neither by Baconians nor by Cartesians, as such, but by men like Galileo and Harvey, Boyle and Newton, who would have done their work just as well if ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... far from it, but if in many circumstances you reason and argue with considerable aptness, I grant you far less deductive faculty. That does not seem to be ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... histories suffer from fatal flaws. They are deductive instead of inductive; they are a defensio sententiarum instead of an investigatio veri; they assume the final truth as known, and go not forth to seek it. They are therefore "teleologic," that is, they study the record ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... the ideal annotator. He was neither inductive nor deductive; he had no axe to grind. His talent consisted in an ant—like hiving faculty. He was acquisitive of information for a set purpose—to bring the ANTIQUITIES up to date. Whatever failed to fit in with this programme, however novel, however interesting—it was ruthlessly discarded. In this and other ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... which enter into ordinary education do not discipline the mind in this way. Mathematical training is almost purely deductive. The mathematician starts with a few simple propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practised, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... interpreted before it can be of any value, especially when dealing with propositions of expediency or policy. There are two general methods of reasoning. One is the inductive method, the other the deductive. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... Essay on "The Economic Basis of Socialism," and also a second, a paper read to the British Association in September, 1888, on the "Transition to Social Democracy." His characteristic style retains its charm, although the abstract and purely deductive economic analysis on which he relied no longer commends itself to the modern school of thought. Sidney Webb's "Historic Basis" is as readable as ever, except where he quotes at length political programmes long forgotten, and recounts the achievements of municipal ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... "Read Voltaire's 'Zadig.' Deductive methods are shown in it useful to begin upon—observe everything about people, and then having seen results, work back to causes, and then realise that all material things are the physical expression of an etheric force, ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... deductive, axiomatic or intuitive, scholastic or introspective methods of inquiry prevailed in the intellectual world, systems of philosophy, psychology and theology were built up according to the peculiar subjective ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... That Sabine had been deeply affected by the presence of the second Englishman—the handsome and vital young man—and number two: That she was now certainly regretting that she was going to obtain her divorce. Further use of Zadig's deductive method produced the conviction that, as an abstract young man would be equally out of reach were she still bound to her husband—or married to Lord Fordyce—and could only be obtained were she divorced—some other reason for her distaste and evident ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... has so complete a logical basis as that to which I have just referred. It tacitly underlies every process of reasoning; it is the foundation of every act of the will. It is based upon the broadest induction, and it is verified by the most constant, regular, and universal of deductive processes. But we must recollect that any human belief, however broad its basis, however defensible it may seem, is, after all, only a probable belief, and that our widest and safest generalizations are simply statements of the highest degree of probability. ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... my dear Major, as far as information goes. If I did not use these arguments before, it was because it seemed to me an impertinence to offer what, after all, are no more than the conclusions of my own constructive and deductive reasoning to one so well versed ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... except Professor Giblet, who accepted all three saving and excepting the term "synthetical" as applied to Rabelais' mind. "For," said he, "you must not be so deceived by an early use of the Inducto-Deductive method as to believe that a sixteenth-century man could be, in any true sense, synthetical." And this judgment the Professor emphasized by raising his voice suddenly by one octave. His position and that of Mrs. Whirtle were based upon that thorough summary of Rabelais' ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... I found this gracious little lady (Mrs. Oldcastle was petite and softly rounded in figure; I am tall and inclined in these days to a stooping, scraggy kind of gauntness) a most delightful companion, admirably well-informed, vivacious, and unusually gifted in the matter of deductive powers and the sense of humour. Also, that (whatever the ship's chatterboxes might say) there had been nothing in the faintest degree compromising in our relations ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... claim the same value, for the same reasons. In formulating them we are acting on the same inductive and deductive methods, and with almost equal confidence, as the geologist. We hold them to be correct, and claim the status of "biological theories" for them, because we cannot understand the nature and origin of man and the other organisms without them, and because they alone satisfy our demand ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel |
