THE LOGIC OF CONCEPT FORMATION IN EMPIRICIST PHILOSOPHY AND CHEMISTRY, FROM LOCKE AND LAVOISIER TO JOHN STUART MILL

The problem of the thesis is to determine the logic of concept formation. Connected to this problem are isssues about the status of kinds and systems of classification. The solution to the problem bears directly on these issues. To clarify some of the issues, the thesis restricts itself to a consideration of concepts of kinds. Two contrary solutions to the thesis problem are considered, the Aristotelian and the Empiricist. For the Aristotelian, the logic of concept formation is deductive logic. For the Empiricist, deductive and inductive logics are the logics of concept formation.;The thesis argues that the Empiricist's is the correct solution to the thesis problem. This is done in two contexts, one historical, one systematic.;The Empiricist solution is described through a consideration of works of seventeenth-nineteenth century British and French Empiricists; that of the Aristotelian, through works of Aristotle and John Sergeant. Arguments arising in this context are used to support the Empiricist solution.;The thesis further supports the Empiricist solution through a consideration of chemistry, a science that investigates kinds. The thesis shows how chemical facts about the formation of concepts of inorganic chemical kinds, as historically adduced, support the Empiricist solution.;The status of definitions is the central point of disagreement between Aristotelian and Empiricist. Both agree that propositions that only describe are distinct from those that only specify meanings. The Aristotelian also supposes that some propositions, 'real definitions', both describe and specify meanings. To justify his supposition, the Aristotelian advances an ontology that includes items, 'real essences', that real definitions are taken to describe. This ontology determines the Aristotelian characterization of science and his account of concept formation. The Empiricist rejects this ontology. Disagreeing with the supposition that some propositions both describe and specify meanings, his characterization of science differs from the Aristotelian's; hence, so also does his account of concept formation.;Results from the historical findings are used systematically to argue, against current Aristotelians, that the Empiricist amounts of the status of definitions and of the logic of the formation of concepts are correct. The thesis ends with a diagnosis of the failure of the Aristotelian solution.