Joined: 16 Dec 2014 Age: 29 Gender: Female Posts: 7,303 Location: The Northern Waste
28 Dec 2014, 5:21 am
Inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning) is reasoning in which the premises seek to supply strong evidence for (not absolute proof of) the truth of the conclusion. Deductive reasoning is a logical process in which a conclusion is based on the concordance of multiple premises that are generally assumed to be true.
These are the official definitions of both.
Basically inductive is making a conclusion and looking for evidence to support it and deductive reasoning is collecting raw data and then making a conclusion from that. Deductive is considered good science where inductive is not.
When one goes looking for proof they usually find something that "verifies" their conclusions. Unfortunately this proof is usually taken without a greater context. Basically someone takes the data that verifies them and ignores that which does not. You can see the problems with this. Biblical Archaeologists are usually guilty of this.
Joined: 26 Jul 2014 Age: 66 Gender: Male Posts: 1,060 Location: Melbourne, Australia
28 Dec 2014, 8:08 am
We're talking agenda here. It is very hard to strip yourself completely of agenda. Perhaps as humans we can compartmentalize and suspend agenda for a period, but the least agenda driven person is the one who only asks questions with no judgement. I know I can be quite judgmental, and that tells me I still have agenda issues. But nothing like 40 years ago.. lol.
I think it would be difficult, even for a professional scientist, not to have some agenda going on, unless strict protocols were in place.
That said, I reckon scientists learn very early, that following an agenda will bite them in the butt. Self correcting science is a good thing.
And... I like Feynman's approach:
Quote:
Now I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law. In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s the truth. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works.
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s WRONG. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is… If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.
_________________ I'm not blind to your facial expression - but it may take me a few minutes to comprehend it. A smile is not always a smile. A frown is not always a frown. And a blank look rarely means a blank mind.
Joined: 10 May 2005 Age: 40 Gender: Female Posts: 7,245
28 Dec 2014, 8:12 am
In science, unfortunately, we have to rely on inductive reasoning ultimately. Still hasn't stopped it from being damn useful.
_________________ "You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
Joined: 5 May 2009 Age: 57 Gender: Female Posts: 6,450 Location: x
28 Dec 2014, 11:54 am
What Narrator and beneficii both said.
You can't design an experiment unless you have a hypothesis that this experiment is testing. You can't make a hypothesis without inductive reasoning.
Thus the necessity for repeatability and multiple researchers with different agendas approaching from different angles.
Collecting raw data and looking for trends is excellent deductive reasoning but sometimes you need inductive reasoning to give you a framework. Both types are necessary.
Joined: 23 Jun 2011 Age: 41 Gender: Male Posts: 635
28 Dec 2014, 12:48 pm
'Origin of Species' is one big exercise in inductive logic.
Also, I've always defined it as Janissy did: "Collecting raw data and looking for trends." If you have a good memory, you aren't looking for data that matches a specific pattern, although you may still be predisposed to notice some things more quickly than others.
If you get rid of inductive logic, you're back to gods and prophets supplying your first-principles.
So I couldn't disagree more. The biggest problem holding back modern science is that we do such a poor job of teaching inductive reasoning that most of academia won't understand it in debate.
28 Dec 2014, 5:21 am
