ABSTRACT
This chapter distinguishes between scientific induction and empirical induction. It argues that James Mill thought induction to be an essential part of any theory. The chapter shows that he perceived the distinction between theory and experience as a false dichotomy—theory needed to be based on experience and experience to be informed by theory. Reasoning synthetically from comprehensive principles to particulars, in order to explain a phenomenon, according to Mill, is “the very business of philosophy”. The chapter also shows that Mill associated empirical induction with the use of induction in rhetorical arguments. Adam Smith had argued that “the People, to which rhetorical discourses are ordinarily directed, have no pleasure in these abstruse deductions; their interest, and the practicability and honourableness of the thing recommended is what alone will sway with them and is seldom to be shewn in a long deduction of arguments”.
