Method of difference

“ The Method of Agreement is more a method of observation, since it is chiefly concerned with the discovery of causes. The Method of Difference is distinctly a method of experiment, because its usual aim is to discover effects. ”

“ The conclusions which that yields, when the number of instances compared is small, are of no real value, except as, in the character of suggestions, they may lead either to experiments bringing them to the test of the Method of Difference, or to reasonings which may explain and verify them deductively. ”

“ What is scientifically known as the uniformity of nature and the method of difference are but the tendencies of the human mind to expect similar coexistences and sequences under similar conditions, and to regard the new antecedent as the cause of the new phenomenon, tendencies as strong in the savage as in the civilized mind. In brief, we should show the student that the difference between the principles and methods of common life, and those studied in logic, is the difference between spontaneous and attentive observation ”

“ Now, in whatever science there are systematic differences of opinion—which is as much as to say, in all the moral or mental sciences, and in Political Economy among the rest; in whatever science there exist, among those who have attended to the subject, what are commonly called differences of principle, as distinguished from differences of matter-of-fact or detail,—the cause will be found to be, a difference in their conceptions of the philosophic method of the science. ”

“ The pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there is no difference of truth that doesn't make a difference of fact somewhere; and it seeks to determine the meaning of all differences of opinion by making the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some practical or particular issue. ”

“ For us who deal, not with the various forms of animal life, but with the various products of human intelligence, the legitimacy of the Comparative Method rests on the well-ascertained similarity of the working of the human mind in all races of men. ”

“ We have, in fact, a very good opportunity of comparing the two systems, as it is a curious fact that in certain things it is almost the universal custom to adopt one method, and in certain others, the other. ”

“ Then we must remember that these external and internal evolutions of social life, take place often unconsciously, making comparisons and distinctions without reflecting on their nature or limits; we must remember that it is the business of reflective comparison, of the comparative method, to retrace this development consciously, and to seek the causes which have produced it. ”

“ Nay, each distinct sensation-quality, or degree, must have its own law; for in each ultimate difference there is something that cannot be assimilated. Such differences amount, according to experimental Psychologists, to more than 50,000. ”

“ It is evident, to begin with, that a scientific comparison of facts must be directed towards two aims—towards establishing and explaining similarity, and towards enumerating and explaining differences. ”

“ The inference that two things differ because their concomitants, effects, names, kinds, or—to put it generally—their signs, differ, is of course susceptible of unlimited complication. The sciences furnish examples, in the way in which men are led, by noticing differences in effects, to assume new hypothetical causes, differing from any known heretofore. But no matter how many may be the steps by which such inferential discriminations are made, they all end in a direct intuition of difference somewhere. ”

“ Now, to get not only at the truth, but at the whole of the truth, is precisely the business of the applied science of religion, and is the very object of that which, in order to distinguish it from the comparative method of science, I have called the method of comparison. For the purposes of fair comparison not only must the resemblances, which the {22} comparative method of science dwells on, be taken into account, but the differences, also, must be weighed. ”

“ By another law, flowing from the same primary principle, the parts of a whole diverge from one another in proportion to their diversity, and group themselves together in proportion to their resemblances. ”

“ The principle of difference is this: “Whatever is invariably present when the phenomenon occurs and invariably absent when the phenomenon does not occur, other circumstances remaining the same, is probably the cause or the effect of the phenomenon.”
Like agreement, difference admits of symbolization and illustration by concrete examples.
The chief difficulties attending difference are: in nature varying one antecedent at a time is infrequent, and it is easy to overlook antecedents which are closely related to the case under investigation. ”

“ It is not the teaching of idealism alone but of the facts which logical analysis has brought home to us that all difference in the last resort finds its ground in the quality or content of the things differentiated, and that this difference of content shows in turn a double strand, the strand of sameness and the strand of otherness—that in which and that by which they differ from one another. ”

“ Far from occupying the same level, and being of equal value, the different species of judgment form a series of steps, the difference of which rests upon the logical significance of the predicate. That judgments differ in value is evident even in our ordinary ways of thinking. ”

“ We compare what we observe with other real and possible cases. Again we compare when we are experimenting. But, in the comparative method, properly so called, we do not limit ourselves to bringing two cases together. ”

“ Nothing can, of course, differentiate itself, nor can any two things differentiate each other, even when functionally allied. The actual coëfficient sought is the difference effected, in functional value, in one of two independent variables. ”

“ For the mind being once initiated into the method of discovering analogies, and expressing them, does by association persevere in this method, and even force things into its system by concealing disparities, magnifying resemblances, and accommodating language thereto. ”

“ As has been already pointed out, this is all that art can do. To test a generalization, by showing that it either follows from, or conflicts with, some stronger induction, some generalization resting on a broader foundation of experience, is the beginning and end of the logic of induction. ”

“ But there remain a large number of the recognised problems of philosophy in regard to which the method advocated gives all those advantages of division into distinct questions, of tentative, partial, and progressive advance, and of appeal to principles with which, independently of temperament, all competent students must agree. ”

“ At bottom the process is one of conception, and is everywhere, even in the sphere of simple sensible qualities, the same as that by which we are usually understood to attain to the notions of abstract goodness, perfect felicity, absolute power, and the like: the direct perception of a difference between compounds, and the imaginary prolongation of the direction of the difference to an ideal terminus, the notion of which we fix and keep as one of our permanent subjects of discourse. ”

“ The next thing which we observe is that the operation of comparing may be repeated on its own results; in other words, that we can think of the various resemblances and differences which we find and compare them with each other, making differences and resemblances of a higher order. ”

“ Obviously the facts comparative morphology sets forth, form a whole which, though it cannot be treated in general or in detail without taking into account facts belonging to comparative physiology, is essentially independent. ”

“ We can divide all relations into two classes; first, relations of comparison, which originate at the moment when our perfectly voluntary attention brings any two elements, or rather their mental images, into a contact with each other that is quite indifferent and unessential to the elements themselves. ”

“ In considering the causal laws of psychology, the distinction between rough generalizations and exact laws is important. There are many rough generalizations in psychology, not only of the sort by which we govern our ordinary behaviour to each other, but also of a more nearly scientific kind. Habit and association belong among such laws. ”

“ And if we ask ourselves what is our standard of comparison, what is our test or measure, and why are we sure of our application of it in such cases, our only answer is that our standard of comparison is reality itself, actual being, perfection; that we rely implicitly on our intuition of such actual reality as manifested to us in varying grades or degrees within our experience ”

“ When, however, we find it possible to connect many of these detached generalizations together, by discovering the more general laws of which they are cases, and to the operation of which in some particular sets of viii circumstances they are due, we gain not only a scientific, but a practical advantage ”

“ This mode of correcting one generalization by means of another, a narrower generalization by a wider, which common sense suggests and adopts in practice, is the real type of scientific Induction. All that art can do is but to give accuracy and precision to this process, and adapt it to all varieties of cases, without any essential alteration in its principle. ”

“ If we analyse a judgment, every word in which it is expressed, whether it is a noun or a verb or a preposition or a conjunction, conveys a distinct meaning, indicates a term or a relation, each of which can be made a distinct object to the mind, and all of which are combined in the single meaning the judgment expresses. It is in this complexity that the possibility of error lies, and the possibility increases as the complexity increases. ”

“ But whatever is capable of being compared, contemplated, and considered relatively, in different lights, may always come within the sphere of our understanding. The more subjects of comparison we have for examining any object, the more methods there are for obtaining a knowledge of it, and with greater facility. ”

“ If A and B are affirmed to be similar in origin or kind, and if B is affirmed to grow into C—or to differ from both A and B only in degree,—it becomes a contradiction further to affirm that C differs from A in kind. ”

“ The definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, is a formula which fails to call up an adequate conception. And it fails from omitting the most distinctive peculiarity—the peculiarity of which we have the most familiar experience, and with which our notion of Life is, more than with any other, associated. ”

“ The combination of the two elements, the subjective or ideal, and the objective or observed, is necessary, in order to give us any insight into the laws of nature. But different persons, according to their mental habits and constitution, may be inclined to dwell by preference upon the one or the other of these two elements. ”

“ It doubtless may, and I believe it will, be found, that mankind have multiplied the varieties unnecessarily, and have imagined distinctions among things, where there were only distinctions in the manner of naming them. ”

“ All the uniformities which exist in the succession of phenomena, and most of the uniformities in their co-existence, are either, as we have seen, themselves laws of causation, or consequences resulting from, and corollaries capable of being deduced from, such laws. If we could determine what causes are correctly assigned to what effects, and what effects to what causes, we should be virtually acquainted with the whole course of nature. ”

“ The second principle I shall take notice of is that of comparison, or the variation of our judgments concerning objects, according to the proportion they bear to those with which we compare them. We judge more of objects by comparison than by their intrinsic worth and value; and regard every thing as mean, when set in opposition to what is superior of the same kind. ”

“ Instead of this, we know that the world consists of bodies distinguishable from each other by definite differences, capable of being classified and named, and of having general propositions asserted concerning them. ”

“ The regressive search of analysis for a determining principle is Invention; the forward progress of synthesis from the simple elements seeking for the multiplicity of the single one is Construction. Each, in its result, passes over into the other; but their truth is found in the dialectic method, which in each The Logical Presupposition or Method.51 phase allows unity to separate into diversity and diversity to return into unity. ”

“ But the understanding in the process of knowledge makes use of the universal form of synthesis, the judgment; intellectual function is essentially of the nature of judgment or the reduction of a manifold to unity through a conception. The specific or type forms of such function will, therefore, be expressed in judgments; and a complete classification of the forms of judgments is the key by which one may hope to discover the system of categories. ”

“ This last principle, which we may call the axiom of constant result, holds good throughout all our mental operations, not only when we compare, but when we add, divide, class, or infer a given matter in any conceivable way. ”

“ In other less exact sciences the facts are exhaustively described and a general statement is formulated as to their relationship. In physiology, for instance, we find mainly descriptions of facts classified into types, the relationships of which are expressed in general formulae, or laws. ”

“ Generalization, on the other hand, consists in an ideal compounding of abstractions, “when, comparing a number of objects, we seize on their resemblances; when we concentrate our attention on these points of similarity.... ”