11 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 Newton's Discovery of Gravity as an Example of Induction ...

All the knowledge we possess of external objects is founded upon experience, which furnishes facts; and the comparison of these facts establishes relations, from which induction, the intuitive belief that like causes will produce like effects, leads to general laws. Thus, experience teaches that bodies fall at the surface of the earth with an accelerated velocity, and with a force proportional to their masses. By comparison, Newton proved that the force which occasions the fall of bodies at t...
  1  notes

He extended the force pulling everything down to the Earth out to the Moon, then to the Sun, and then the planets to see how our solar system really works.

14 SEP 2011 by ideonexus

 The Problem of Induction

It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.
  1  notes

Is not a problem if we accept empirical generalizations from past experiences as continuing to prove true in the future.