Inductive Fallacy

The study of inductive fallacies was given its most systematic early form by John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic (1843) — the first major work to situate fallacies within a framework of inductive reasoning. Mill divided them into fallacies of observation and fallacies of generalization, the latter covering errors such as drawing universal conclusions from too few cases. No single figure coined the umbrella term; it evolved as a classification within formal logic building on Aristotle's earlier work.