““And Mendeleev’s guesses showed that induction is a more subtle process in the hands of a scientist than Bacon and other philosophers supposed. In science we do not simply march along a linear progression of known instances to unknown ones. Rather, we work as in a crossword puzzle, scanning two separate progressions for the points at which they intersect: that is where the unknown instances should be in hiding. Mendeleev scanned the progression of atomic weights in the columns, and the family likenesses in the rows, to pinpoint the missing elements at their intersections. By doing so, he made practical predictions, and he also made manifest (what is still poorly understood) how scientists actually carry out the process of induction. Very””
![“The only hope [of science] ... is in genuine induction.…” quote by Francis Bacon](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/090/francis-bacon-297_accounts_the-only-hope-of-science-is-in-genuine-i_829146.jpg)
