If "inducing" (not "inducting") a genus concept ("description") is unacceptable, then how about "synthesizing" a genus description ("concept") from the data garnered from the to-be-included species definitions (concepts)? (And, do other "related" genera/species influence one's thinking in the formulation of this new genus's concept/description too?)

Peter

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Sauvenay Guillaume wrote:

Kevin Thiele wrote:

...

Consider this in the real world. If I have a number of descriptions of species, and from them I want to create a genus description, then I would /collate/ the genus description from the species descriptions. /Compile/ and /aggregate/ would also work, but I think collate works better.

couldn't we call that induction? here is a definition : "Induction is the process of inference employed in "inductive logic". A mode of reasoning that starts with specific facts and concludes general hypotheses or theories"

here, species descriptions are observed fact and genus description is inducted and this term is less general than infer

Guillaume Sauvenay