The paper aims to expose the induction – deduction relation within W. Whewell’s treatise «Novum Organon Renovatum». Since Aristotle’s time. induction and deduction have been interpreted as independent and even «opposite» inferences (ways of connecting premises and conclusions), but this intuition is violated in W. Whewell’s works. Based on contemporary practice of some specific natural sciences W. Whewell quite reasonably concludes that “Aristotle overlooks a step which is of far more importance to our knowledge, namely, the invention of the second (...) extreme term” and that “induction moves upward, and deduction downwards the same stair”. Ultimately, assessing the contribution of W. Whewell to the development and consolidation of the classical image of science, it can be noted that his thesis that “deduction justifies induction” is much more in line with the instrumentalism of E. Mach and A. Poincaré than J. Mill’s inductivism. (shrink)

In a recent paper,[3], Harold T. Walsh has argued that Whewell's commentators have in the past misunderstood his use of “necessary,” that Whewell's theory of necessary truth developed only gradually through thirty years of scholarly activity, finally finding a “mature” expression in Philosophy of Discovery, published in 1860, and that a proper understanding of Whewell's “mature” theory of necessary truth leads to a fundamental re-interpretation of the nature of the Ideas and of their role in scientific systems—that the meaning of (...) “necessity” as Whewell expresses it in Philosophy of Discovery leads, in short, to a new and more illuminating reading of his philosophy of inductive science. It is my view that the three propositions asserting Walsh's view are incorrect, expecially the two important and crucial ones and. In what follows, I shall state what seem to me to be the grounds for rejecting Walsh's view that Whewell's theory of necessity was not arrived at before 1860, and hence for rejecting his interpretation of some basic aspects of Whewell's philosophy of science. (shrink)