Inductivism

Inductivism is the position that scientific knowledge is properly built by reasoning from particular observations to general conclusions, rather than by starting from assumed first principles and deducing consequences from them. Francis Bacon set out an influential early version of the position in the Novum Organum, published in 1620, proposing a method of eliminative induction: collecting organized tables of instances in which a phenomenon is present, absent or varies in degree, then using them to rule out false explanations and arrive at the underlying cause. Bacon's method directly shaped the experimental philosophy that took hold in England later in the seventeenth century, including the work of the Royal Society, founded in London in 1660. Inductivism remained a dominant account of scientific method for centuries before Karl Popper argued, in the twentieth century, that induction is never actually the logic scientists use, proposing falsificationism as a rival account built on testing and refutation instead.