Is Science Really Inductive?

Abstract

Arthur W. Burks has made major contributions to Peirce scholarship, computer science, automata theory, modal logic, and the philosophy of science; his contributions to any one of these areas would constitute a productive career most academics would envy. Disparate as these fields are, in Burks’ approach to them there are deep interconnections. And in his monumental work Chance, Cause, Reason ¹ Burks manages to exploit these interconnections to provide a richly detailed account of “the ultimate nature of the knowledge acquired by the empirical sciences.” (p. 651) It does so by presenting his Presupposition Theory of Induction, a theory that provides a rich foundational analysis of “standard inductive logic” — which, according to Burks, “is the system of rules of inductive inference actually used and aspired to by the practicing scientist.” (p. 654)