INDUCTION IN THE NEW SOCIAL STUDIES.

One of the problems that the New Social Studies was supposed to avoid was the certainty which students attach to knowledge. This was to be done through the utilization of inductive procedures. The problem was that little attention was paid to the nature of the logical problem raised by David Hume. Essentially the problem concerns the making of accurate predictions based on past experience. It is logically impossible to do so. Few of the materials and writers in the sixties dealt with this problem. Even more serious was the limiting of induction only to those inferences which go from a particular set of premises to a general conclusion. A far more accurate definition is that induction is a non-demonstrative inference whose conclusion is ampliative. A deductive inference is one, which is demonstrative and whose conclusion is non-ampliative. Thus, the source of difference between an inductive and deductive inference is the property of truth preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]