ABSTRACT
Despite the difficulty of formulating a principle of uniformity of nature that is not uninterestingly false, many have echoed Hume's claim that inductive inference presupposes some such principle. Musgrave, for example, on behalf of deductivists everywhere, noting that 'it conduces to clarity' to construe inductive inferences as deductive enthymemes, identifies 'Any explanation of a (surprising) fact is true'. And 'The best explanation of any body of facts is true' as the premises suppressed in the styles of inductive inference promoted respectively as abductive inference and inference to the best explanation. Since no single inductive inference need presuppose anything like as much as the whole uniformity of nature, how much uniformity must a typical inference presuppose? If philosophers wished to combine the information with a Uniformity of Nature principle, in order to derive the conclusion that all metals expand whenever they are heated, what form would that principle have to take?
