5. Projected Science of Society

JSM, Autobiography, CW, i, 125.

Ibid., 95.

Ibid., 215.

To refer to the study of social phenomena, Mill employed several different terms. Even within a single work such as Logic, such terms were used as ‘the study of the phenomena of Society’ (ibid., viii, 875), ‘the study of Politics’ (ibid.), ‘political or social science’ (ibid.), ‘the philosophy of society’ (ibid., 876), ‘Social Science’ (ibid., 877, 895), and ‘Sociology’ (ibid., 895). In addition, he had previously used such terms as ‘speculative politics’, ‘the natural history of society’, and ‘the science of social economy’. (JSM, ‘Definition’, CW, iv, 320–321) See also Note 17 of this chapter.

Fontana (1985, 81–105).

JSM, ‘Miss Martineau’s Summary of Political Economy’, CW, iv, 226–227. In regard to this statement, of further importance was Mill’s anxiety that the overlooking of the possibility of institutional and social change would discourage the hope for human improvement. He went on to say: ‘We only ask of those to whom we are indebted for so much, that they will not require of us to believe that this is all, nor, by fixing bounds to the possible reach of improvement in human affairs, set limits also to that ardour in its pursuit, which may be excited for an object at an indefinite distance, but only if it be also of indefinite magnitude.’ (ibid., 227)

JSM, ‘Essays on Government’ (September 1840), CW, xviii, 151. See also JSM, Logic, CW, viii, 919.

Rosen (2007, 133).

For the process of writing ‘Definition of Political Economy’, see John Robson, ‘Editor’s Note’, CW, iv, 309. For Mill’s argument on the definition and method of political economy, see Chap. 8 below.

Besides the expression ‘moral science’, Mill employed such phrases as ‘psychological science’ or ‘mental science’ for this branch of science. (JSM, ‘Definition’, CW, iv, 316, 324)

Ibid., 319.

Ibid., 320.

When this essay was republished in 1844 as part of Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, the following sentence was inserted at this point: ‘in what historical order those states tend to succeed one another’. This insertion, as J. H. Burns points out, reflects his strong interest in the theory of social change at that period. (Burns 1976, 7)

JSM, ‘Definition’, CW, iv, 320.

Ibid., 320–321. For this science, Mill proposed such names as ‘social economy’, ‘speculative politics’, ‘the science of politics’, and ‘the natural history of society’. (ibid.)

Ibid., 321.

Ibid., 323.

Ibid., 322.

Ibid., 331.

Ibid., 325.

Ibid., 338–339.

Ibid., 326.

Ibid.

JSM to Robert Barclay Fox, 14 February 1843, CW, xiii, 569. See also JSM to Alexis de Tocqueville, 3 November 1843, CW, xiii, 612.

Ibid.

Ibid., 838.

Ibid., 836–837.

Ibid., 837.

Ibid., 840.

Ibid., 840.

Ibid., 839.

Ibid., 841.

See further Chap. 7 below.

Mill stated: ‘To ascertain, therefore, what are the laws of causation which exist in nature; to determine the effects of every cause, and the causes of all effects,—is the main business of Induction; and to point out how this is done is the chief object of Inductive Logic.’ (ibid., vii, 378) The process of generalization was also designated by this term. (ibid., 307) These two processes were very similar, but he distinguished between them in that exceptions might be involved in generalization, while an ascertained law of causation did not have exceptions. See ibid., 445.

Ibid., 312.

JSM, Logic, Bk. iii, Chap. 8, ibid., 388–406. In addition to these four methods, Mill presented the joint method of agreement and difference, which combined the methods of agreement and of difference. (ibid., 396)

Ibid., 390.

Ibid., 391.

Ibid., 398.

Ibid., 401.

Ibid., 406.

Ibid., 394.

Ibid., 397–398.

Ibid., 401.

Ibid., viii, 881.

Ibid., vii, 393.

Ibid., 434–435.

Ibid., 443.

Ibid.

The experimental method was also called as the ‘chemical method’, the ‘method à posteriori’, or the ‘direct induction’. Mill criticized this method as empiricism. It should be remembered that Mill identified his own position with ‘the School of Experience’, and stood in opposition to what he called empiricism, which he thought bad generalization and unscientific surmise. See Anschutz (1953, 73); R.F. McRae, ‘Introduction’, CW, vii, xxi–xxii.

Ibid.

Ibid., 373.

Ibid. In his Autobiography, Mill stated: ‘I then recollected that something not unlike this was pointed out as one of the distinctions between chemical and mechanical phenomena, in the introduction to that favorite of my boyhood, Thomson’s System of Chemistry. This distinction at once made my mind clear as to what was perplexing me in respect to the philosophy of politics. I now saw, that a science is either deductive or experimental, according as, in the province it deals with, the effects of causes when conjoined, are or are not the sums of the effects which the same causes produce when separate. It followed that politics must be a deductive science.’ (JSM, Autobiography, CW, i, 167)

Mill used ‘the state of society’ and ‘the state of civilization’ interchangeably.

Ibid., 912.

Ibid., 899.

Ibid., 912.

Mill saw ‘the necessary correlation between the form of governments existing in any society and the contemporaneous state of civilization’ as ‘a natural law’. (ibid., 919)

Ibid., 908.

Ibid., 918.

Ibid., 924.

Ibid., 912.

Ibid., 911.

Ibid., 888.

Ibid., 890.

Ibid., 888.

Ibid., 895.

See pp. 87–88 above.

Ibid., 896–897.

Ibid., 909.

Ibid., 900.

Ibid., 916.

Ibid., 870.

Ibid.

See de Mattos (2005, 34–40).

Mill stated that only a state of mind caused by an antecedent state of mind could be the subject matter of psychology. When a state of mind was produced by a state of the body, the relevant law was a law of the body, and belonged to physiology. See JSM, Logic, CW, viii, 849–851.

See Robson (1998, 346).

This point would be developed in his posthumous essay on ‘Nature’. See JSM, ‘Nature’, CW, x, 393, in which Mill stated: ‘it remains true that nearly every respectable attribute of humanity is the result not of instinct, but of a victory over instinct’.

JSM, PPE, CW, ii, 367. See also JSM, ‘Civilization’, CW, xviii, 119–148.

Robson (1998, 347).

Nicholas Capaldi states that, ‘For Mill, the science of human nature is ethology and not psychology.’ (Capaldi 1973, 415) However, this statement is inaccurate, as Mill thought that psychology was the science of human nature, and ethology was, despite its importance, a mere derivative science, and not in itself the ultimate science. See JSM, Logic, CW, viii, 861–874.

Popper (1945, ii, 85ff).

Kubitz (1932, 216ff); Brown (1984, 233–237).

Ibid. It should be noted that, in all cases, the resolution passed from less general to more general laws.

Ibid., 464–465.

Ibid., 465.

Ibid., 469.

See p. 92 above.

Ibid., viii, 789.

Ibid., 789–790.

Ibid., vii, 591.

Sekiguchi (1989, 300–302).

Mill stated: ‘The empirical laws which are most readily obtained by generalization from history do not amount to this [i.e., axiomata media]. They are not the “middle principles” themselves, but only evidence towards the establishment of such principles. They consist of certain general tendencies which may be perceived in society; a progressive increase of some social elements, and diminution of others, or a gradual change in the general character of certain elements. … But these and all such results are still at too great a distance from the elementary laws of human nature on which they depend,—too many links intervene, and the concurrence of causes at each link is far too complicated,—to enable these propositions to be presented as direct corollaries from those elementary principles. They have, therefore, in the minds of most inquirers, remained in the state of empirical laws, applicable only within the bounds of actual observation; without any means of determining their real limits, and of judging whether the changes which have hitherto been in progress are destined to continue indefinitely, or to terminate, or even to be reversed.’ (ibid., viii, 924–925)

Ibid., 870–871.

JSM, Autobiography, CW, i, 231.