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Herschel outlines two methods of science in his Preliminary Discourse - the inductivist method towards the beginning, and the method of hypotheses in later parts. In the inductivist method beginning he follows the Baconian tradition and advocates for a “safe and secure safe path of induction” induction in which a scientist must reject a method of hypothesis in which a proposed theory is not “properly tethered” adequately connected to the phenomena in question. [[CiteRef::Cobb (2012b)|pp. 23-28]] In developing a hypothesis/theory, one must consider the results of the earlier inductive stages of inquiry, and cannot simply use “unrestrained [...] imagination”. [[CiteRef::Herschel (1831)|p. 190]] After a hypothesis is arrived at in an appropriate fashion, one can go on to the important deductive stage of an investigation in order to “verify the provisional conclusions they have derived”.[[CiteRef:Cobb (2012b)|p. 25]]

It is valid, however, to question Herschel’s commitment to this “novice” method (as some authors have labeled it) - he seems to allow for wilder speculation in his method of hypotheses (i.e. his “expert” method), and some have said that the novice method was outlined mainly for rhetorical purposes and that Herschel’s true views were more closely aligned with a more liberal, less restrictive set of guidelines. Bolt claims that Herschel “explicitly encourages and defends the use of hypothetical reasoning” in PD and in related essays, meaning that he did not feel bound to the naive inductivist view outlined above. [[CiteRef::Bolt (1998)]] This was influenced in part by the great success of the wave theory of light, which was a prime example of a theory which could not have come from purely inductive generalizations (whereas Newton’s theory of gravity is an example of one which could have). [[CiteRef::Laudan (1981a)]] In this sense, Herschel contributed to the rise of the hypothetico-deductive method in the 19th-century.