Do any number of cases of a law being fulfilled in the past afford evidence that it will be fulfilled in the future?" He implies that we have reason to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. That reason is based on past observations but still reason enough. His theory was that the greater the occurrence within the observations went according to the theory, the more likely it was to be true. "Truth was, in this sense, achievable" (Gillott, J & Kumar, M. 1995, p.18).
Bertrand Russell also asks "is there any reason for believing in what is called "the uniformity of nature"?" (Russell, B. 1998,p.98). This belief is that every thing that has happened or will happen can be predicted by some general law. It is this view that underlies the theory of induction. He goes on to say "The business of science is to find uniformities, such as the laws of motion and the law of gravitation, which, so far, as our experience extends, there are no exceptions" (Russell, B. 1998,p.99). He implies that since there have been no exceptions so far, after years of extensive testing, shouldn't we have the same reason to look upon them as true as we do the statement about the sun rising in the morning.
It's ironic that he chose to use Newton's laws as an example when only three years later, Einstein published his general theory of relativity. Although Newton's theory had worked accordingly most of the time, Einstein showed the theory to be generally wrong. If you had asked any physicist a question involving the laws of motion before this, you would have received an answer based only on Newton's laws. This answer could have been false as Einstein proved. Certainly cannot lie in science now if we were wrong in science in the past. .
In 1934 Karl Popper wrote "The Logic of Scientific Discovery", completely dismissing Bacon's "Method of Induction" and introducing his own method. He rejects the idea that science advances when making generalisations from observations or experiments, since generalisations can only be made logically.
