Item 34 - Letter from George Cornewall Lewis

8 pp

Kent House, Knightsbridge - Apologises for not thanking WW, when they met at the club, for the copy of his 'interesting paper on Aristotle's chapter on Induction ['Criticism of Aristotle's Account of Induction', part 1, Trans. of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1850]. By a coincidence he had been written to by Professor Owen [Richard Owen] at the same time on the same subject: 'Aristotle's use of the word induction is not consistent. Sometimes he calls the mere collection of particulars by that name; sometimes he includes under it both the process of collection and the inference founded upon it'. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle 'distinctly opposes both syllogism and induction as if they mutually excluded each other'.