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Most influential philosophers of the past few centuries strongly adhered to this concept. Rationalist philosophers such as Leibniz and Descartes, and their followers maintained this principle. Kant himself ardently believed in the principle of the ‘uniformity of nature.’ Though Mill, and some British empiricists generally, tried to disassociate themselves from rationalist and Kantian doctrines, they nonetheless believed in this principle. Given this widespread acceptance, Mill too implicitly agreed to it, and used it to justify his claims in support inductive inferences [[CiteRef::Buchdahl (1971)]]
Another important concept that Mill inherited is Hume’s ‘problem of induction.’ The primary idea is that due to our limited particular experiences we generalize the results, thinking that the future will resemble the past. However, since our experience is limited, but the future universalization is infinite, there is no justification that the future will resemble the past. Take a classic example: one may observe million swans all of whom are white. Accordingly, one can make the universal conclusion that, given our large set of data, “all swans are white.” Importantly, this conclusion makes an assertion about the future: all swans that will be observed in the future will also be white. However, no matter how many singular observational instances there may be, it cannot be guaranteed that a future instance may not refute the past. That is, we cannot necessarily claim that there will never be a non-white swan (e.g., black swan). This is Hume’s ‘problem of induction,’ which plagues all empirical sciences. Inheriting the British empiricist tradition, Mill had to, broadly speaking, justify induction and, particularlyin particular, empirical sciences as well. The ‘problem of induction’ provided the context within which Mill worked.
Mill entered the debate on the epistemology of science through the publication of his book “A System of Logic” in 1843. Most of his work was in response to the book “History of Inductive Sciences ” by William Whewell that was published in 1837. Mill’s book, which expressed his “difference of opinion” [[CiteRef::Strong (1955)|p.209]] with Whewell, was popular among the British empiricists. One of the reasons that the intellectual community disregarded Whewell’s ideas on science was his departure from the tradition of British empiricist such as Locke and Berkeley. Instead, Whewell had aligned himself with continental philosophers such as Kant. This contention, however, was more than a mere divide between rationalist and empiricist traditions. Whewell approached science through its history, whereas Mill thought that using logic was more appropriate [[CiteRef::Strong (1955)]].
