Peirce’s reading on Aristotle’s account of induction

Abstract

On several occasions during his life, Peirce argued that Aristotle was the fi rst to present a perfect form of induction, and also claimed that he followed Aristotle in this formulation. Despite this, Peirce criticizes Aristotle´s justifi cation of induction as an enumeration of all individuals and as a self-evident and immediate inference that depends upon intuition (nous). In this article, the author explores the readings and comments that Peirce makes of the two most important passages of Aristotle on induction (epagōgē), namely, Prior Analytics II, 23 and Posterior Analytics II, 19. The fi rst is commented and partially translated by Peirce whereas the second is not mentioned directly, although it seems that Peirce refers to it when he discusses the problem of fi rst principles. In addition to presenting Peirce’s comments about these two passages, the author evaluates critically their accuracy and finds that Peirce sometimes interprets them wrongly.

Keywords:

Charles S. Peirce

Aristóteles

Inducción

epagōgē

Charles S. Peirce

Aristotle

Induction

epagōgē

References

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