Apr 1890
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1890natur..41..586s&link_type=abstract
Nature, Volume 41, Issue 1069, pp. 586 (1890).
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Scientific paper
SOME years ago a weekly paper represented a young rustic asking his mother, ``Be that the same moon they have up to Lunnon?'' to which question the mother evasively replied, ``You leave the moon alone and go to bed.'' The boy was satisfied by retorting, ``I baint a touching on it.'' But his question is this month brought once more to the front by the following passage, which will be found in one of our most important monthly magazines. ``But if,'' says the writer, ``there is an abuse of the deductive method of reasoning, there is also an abuse of the inductive method. One who refused to believe that a new moon would in a month become full, and, disregarding observations accumulated throughout the past, insisted on watching the successive phases before he was convinced, would be considered inductive in an irrational degree.'' We cannot, of course, presume to dictate to or for the moon ``up to Lunnon,'' but here in the country the new moon becomes full in half a month, and we have convinced ourselves by watching the successive phases that a new moon will in a month become a new moon again. Nevertheless we willingly admit that life is far too short and too encumbered to allow of any man's repeating more than a small fraction of the accumulated observations on which his scientific beliefs are founded. Yet, on the other hand, taking things for granted is probably the source of nine-tenths of the errors that fill our minds, while the men of genius seem to be just those who know best what and how to observe for themselves, and bow much to trust in the observations of others.
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