Definition of "colligation"

These therefore the midwife cutteth off, contriving them into a knot close unto the body of the Infant; from whence ensueth that tortuosity or complicated nodosity we usually call the Navell; occasioned by the colligation of the vessels before mentioned.

1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], London: […] T[homas] H[arper] for Edward Dod, […]

Induction is a term applied to describe the process of a true Colligation of Facts by means of an exact and appropriate Conception.

1840, William Whewell, “Aphorisms Concerning Science”, in The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon Their History. […], volume I, London: John W[illiam] Parker, […]; Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: J. and J. J. Deighton, paragraph XIII, page xxxix

the colligation of facts

1843, John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John W[illiam] Parker, […]

In order to have knowledge of the physical world, we use our ideas and concepts as the "thread" on which we string the facts about the world, the "pearls." We do this by a process Whewell called colligation.

2011, Laura J. Snyder, The Philosophical Breakfast Club Broadway Books, page 252 (in a discussion of William Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon Their History (1840))