ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two groups, namely, demands for identity, persistence and continuity, and the demand for simplicity. It shows that the demand that the existent world should be intelligible involves the assumption that certain conditions hold with regard to the way things happen and with regard to the relation of the scientist to nature. The chapter also shows that the interpretation of the Uniformity of Nature as equivalent to the unbroken reign of Law is also useless for inductive method. The empiricist logician, no less than the rationalist logician, assumes that the Law of Universal Causation provides us with a sufficient answer to Hume's problem. Either induction is reduced to deduction, in which case its validity is purely formal, so that it becomes difficult to see how generalizations concerning matters of fact are possible; or deduction is reduced to induction, in which case it still remains that the Law of Universal Causation must be proved.
