Abstract

The majority of the philosophical attention on induction has been connected with universal conventions: “All crows are black,” “All emeralds are green,” “Every creature with kidneys is a creature with a heart,” and others. It has been observed that if it can be shown how and why such conventions can be given rational justification by our restrained observations of the world, the outcome will be simpler. It is felt that it is but a small step from here to quantitative laws and only a little-longer jump to general theories. After achieving an understanding of general theories, we can go back, in a mopping-up approach, to handle such irrelevant trivia as statistical conventions.