Whewell contends that, besides the sum of the facts, colligation introduces, as a principle of connection, a conception of the mind not existing in the facts.
Whewell sets out this last operation, which he terms the colligation of facts, as induction, and even as the type of induction generally.
Whewell calls the process Colligation of Facts by appropriate Conceptions, and affirms it to be the whole of Induction.
But colligationsimply sums up the facts observed, as seen under a new point of view.
An exact enumeration and careful colligation of all the phenomena are therefore indispensable prerequisites to the solution of the problem.
Whewell, by an aptly chosen expression, has termed the Colligation of Facts.
Colligation is not always induction; but induction is always colligation.
In different stages of the progress of knowledge, philosophers have employed, for the colligation of the same order of facts, different conceptions.
There is, however, between Colligation and Induction, a real correlation, which it is important to conceive correctly.
Even a simple colligation of inductions already made, without any fresh extension of the inductive inference, is already an advance in that direction.
But the induction, once made, accomplishes the purposes ofcolligation likewise.
Without the previous colligation of detached observations by means of one general conception, we could never have obtained any basis for an induction, except in the case of phenomena of very limited compass.
He urged the Colligation of Facts, but he was not the less aware of the value of the Explication of Conceptions.
There is another argument which Mr. Mill employs in order to show that there is a difference between mere colligation which is description, and induction in the more proper sense of the term.
In this and in other expressions, we see how clearly he apprehended that colligation of facts which is the main business of the practical discoverer.
The Explication of Conceptions must go on, as we have already shown, at the same rate as the Colligation of Facts.
Colligation of Facts by means of appropriate Conceptions, is but the ordinary process of finding by a comparison of phenomena, in what consists their agreement or resemblance.
Mr. Whewell, by an aptly chosen expression, has termedColligation of Facts.
If we had never seen any white object or had never seen any cloven-footed animal before, we should at the same time and by the same mental act acquire the idea, and employ it for the colligation of the observed phenomena.
The Colligation of Facts is no other than this preliminary operation.
The Colligation of Facts, therefore, by means of hypotheses, or, as Dr.
