13.3.3: Induction from Past to Future (Prediction).

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Bradley H. Dowden
California State University Sacramento

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As goes the past, so goes the future. That is a common style of inductive argument. Here is an example:

The record book shows that the American track teams have won more meets than the Australian track teams. So, the Americans can be expected to dominate the Australians in future track meets.

This is an induction by analogy because it depends on the claim that the future will be analogous to the past in certain ways. Not all past patterns can be justifiably projected to hold in the future. The chicken assumes that the hand that has fed it will continue to feed it in the future, but one day that hand will wring its neck. One of the principal problems of science is to discover which patterns are projectible into the future and which are not. No easy task.

Arguments from past patterns to future patterns depend on a crucial premise: If we are ignorant of any reason that a past pattern should not continue, then it probably will continue.

The principles of reasoning that this section has applied to inductions from the past to the future also apply to inductions from the past to the present and to inductions from the present to the future.