We have still to consider the extension of the methods of number theory to infinite ordinals—or to transfinite numbers as they may also, as usual, be called.

The means for establishing number theory are, as we know, recursive definition, complete induction, and the “principle of the least number.” The last of these applies to arbitrary ordinals as well as to finite ordinals, since every nonempty class of ordinals has a lowest element. Hence immediately results also the following generalization of complete induction, called transfinite induction: If A is a class of ordinals such that (1) ΟηA, and (2) αηA → α′ηA, and (3) for every limiting number l, (x)(xεl → xηA) → lηA, then every ordinal belongs to A.

The motives for seeking economy in the basis of a system are much the same as the motives for constructing the system itself. A given idea A need be left as primitive in a system only so long as we have discovered between A and the other primitives no relationship intimate enough to permit defining A in terms of them; hence the more the set of primitives can be reduced without becoming inadequate, the more comprehensively will the system exhibit the network of interrelationships that comprise its subject-matter. Of course we are often concerned less with an explicit effort to reduce our basis than with particular problems as to how to define certain ideas from others. But such special problems of derivation, such problems of rendering certain ideas eliminable in favor of others, are merely instances of the general problem of economy. Thus it is quite wrong to think of the search for economy as a sort of game, inspired by an abnormal love of superficial neatness. Some economies may be relatively unimportant, but the inevitable result of regarding all economy as trivial would be a willingness to accept all ideas as primitive at the outset, making a system both unnecessary and impossible.

The concept of confirmation occupies a central position in the methodology of empirical science. For it is the distinctive characteristic of an empirical hypothesis to be amenable, at least in principle, to a test based on suitable observations or experiments; the empirical data obtained in a test—or, as we shall prefer to say, the observation sentences describing those data—may then either confirm or disconfirm the given hypothesis, or they may be neutral with respect to it. To say that certain observation sentences confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis, does not, of course, generally mean that those observation sentences suffice strictly to prove or to refute the hypothesis in question, but rather that they constitute favorable, or unfavorable, evidence for it; and the term “neutral” is to indicate that the observation sentences are either entirely irrelevant to the hypothesis, or at least insufficient to strengthen or weaken it.