For De Maillet not only has a definite conception of the plasticity of living things, and of the production of existing species by the modification of their predecessors, but he clearly apprehends the cardinal maxim of modern geological science, that the explanation of the structure of the globe is to be sought in the deductive application to geological phenomena of the principles established inductively by the study of the present course of nature.
He lectured on logic, deductive and inductive, systematic psychology and ethical theory.
If their view is correct, the theory appears to be a remarkable example of deductive reasoning.
Hence, without his saying it in so many words, Aristotle's logic perforce became a logic of deductive reasoning, or syllogism.
On the whole, then, analogical, inductive and deductive inferences are not the same but three similar and closely connected processes.
