A History of Greek Philosophy / SOCRATES

Page 5

This simple enough yet profound and far-reaching practice of Socrates was theorised in later times as a logical method, known to us as Induction, or the discovery of universal laws or principles out of an accumulation of particular facts. And thus Aristotle, with his technical and systematising intellect, attributes two main innovations in philosophy to Socrates; the Inductive process of reasoning, and the establishing of General Ideas or Definitions upon or through this process. This, true enough as indicating what was latent in the Socratic method, and what was subsequently actually developed out of it by Aristotle himself, is nevertheless probably an anachronism if one seeks to represent it as consciously present in Socrates’ mind.

Socrates adopted the method unconsciously, just because he wanted to get at the people about him, and through them at what they thought. He was the pioneer of Induction rather than its inventor; he created, so to speak, the raw material for a theory of induction and definition; he knew and cared nothing about such theories himself.

A story which may or may not be true in fact is put in Socrates’ mouth by Plato, as to the cause which first started him on his “search for definitions.” One of his friends, he tells us, named Chaerephon, went to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and asked whether there was anybody wiser than Socrates. The answer was given that there was none wiser.

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