The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus c10.15

c10.15

The Hindu Anumána, it will be seen, anticipates J. S. Mill's analysis of the syllogism as a material inference, but is more comprehensive; for the Hindu Udáharana, the third or general proposition with an example, combines and harmonises Mill's view of the major premise as a brief memorandum of like instances already observed, fortified by a recommendation to extend its application to unobserved cases, with the Aristotelian view of it as a universal proposition which is the formal ground of the inference. This Formal-Material Deductive-Inductive process thus turns on one thing—the establishment of the invariable concomitance (व्याप्ति) between the mark and the character inferred—in other words, an inductive generalisation. The question is—what is our warrant for taking the leap from the observed to unobserved cases? Under what conditions are we justified to assert a Universal Real proposition on the basis of our necessarily limited observation?