Abstract
The received theories of epistemology identify abductive inferences with the cognitive patterns of speculation (hypothesis formation) and insist that they cannot verify or confirm hypotheses. I criticize various descriptions of abduction, offer a structural analysis of abductive inference,, characterize abduction without alluding to its putative role in inquiry, and then demonstrate that some abductions do provide evidence and that not all scientific hypotheses derive from abductive inferences. This result challenges those notions of scientific k knowledge that dismiss some central scientific ideas (for example, evolution) as ‘meta-physical research programs’ or ‘just theories’ when they are instead well substantiated by abductive evidence.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, Douglas R.: 1986, ‘The Evolution of Peirce's Concept of Abduction’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 22, 145–164.
Aristotle: 1958, Topica et Sophistici Elenchi, Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Aristotle: 1959, Ars Rhetorica, Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Aristotle: 1964, Analytica Priora et Posteriora, Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Bazerman, C.: 1988, Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wis.
Bohr, N.: 1913, ‘On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules’, Philosophical Magazine, 1–25, 476–502, 857–875.
Braithwaite, R. B.: 1955, Scientific Explanations, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge.
Burtt, E. A.: 1954, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, Doubleday Anchor, Garden City, N. Y.
Bybee, M. D.: 1991, ‘Abduction and Rhetorical Theory’, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 24(4), 281–300.
Camp, J. M.: 1986, The Athenian Agora: Excavations in the Heart of Classical Athens, Thames and Hudson, London.
Dawkins, R.: 1987, The Blind Watchmaker, W. W. Norton & Co., New York.
de Stoeckl, A. and Edwards, W. S.: 1953, When Men Had Time to Love, J. Murray, London, in C. Fadiman (ed.): 1985, The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, Little, Brown, Boston, 390.
Domino, B.: 1994, ‘Two Models of Abductive Inquiry’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 27(1), 63–65.
Eldredge, N.: 1982, Introduction to Mayr, reprint.
Fann, K. T.: 1970, Peirce's Theory of Abduction, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague.
Feyerabend, P.: 1975, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, Verso, London.
Flew, A.: 1979, A Dictionary of Philosophy, St. Martin's Press, New York.
Gish, D. T.: July, 1981, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Discover 2(7), 6.
Gould, S. J.: 1991, ‘In a Jumbled Drawer’, Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 309–324.
Gross, G.: 1988, ‘Adaptation in Evolutionary Epistemology: Clarifying Hull's Model’, Biology and Philosophy, 3, 185–186.
Gross, G.: 1990, The Rhetotic of Science, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Hanson, N. R.: 1961, ‘Is There a Logic of Scientific Discovery?’, in H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.), Current Issues in the Philosophy of Science, Proceeding of Section L of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, 1959. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York.
Hanson, N. R.: 1969, Patterns of Discovery, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge.
Hull, D. L.: 1976, ‘The Principles of Biological Classification: The Use and Abuse of Philosophy’, PSA 2, 130–153.
Jammer, M.: 1966, The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics, McGraw-Hill Book co., New York.
Keegan, J.: 1978, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme, Penguin Books, New York.
Kuhn, T.S.: 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Lanigan, R. L.: 1995, ‘From Enthymeme to Abduction: The Classical Law of Logic and the Postmodern Rule of Rhetoric’, in L. Langsdorf and A. R. Smith (eds.), Recovering Pragmatism's Voice: The Classical Tradition, Rorty, and the Philosophy of Communication, State Univ. of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Lord, W.: 1967, Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway, Harper Collins, New York.
Mayr, E.: 1942, Systematics and the Origin of Species, Columbia Univ. Press, New York, reprint 1982.
Peirce, C. S.: 1931–1960, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (ed.) by Hartshorne, Weiss, and Burks. Belknap Press, Cambridge, Mass. All references are by volume number and paragraph number, e.g., ‘6.350’ indicates the sixth volume, paragraph number 350.
Popper, K. R.: 1959, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Basic Books, New York.
Popper, K. R.: 1963, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Harper Torchbooks, New York.
Reese, W. L.: 1980, Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought, Humanities Press, New Jersey.
Ross, W. D. (ed.): 1980, Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics, Garland Publishing, Inc., New York & London.
Runes, D. D. (ed.): 1962, Dictionary of Philosophy, Littlefield, Adams, & Co., Totowa, New Jersy.
Sabre, R. M.: 1994, ‘A Note on Inquiry, Logic and Rhetoric’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 27 (1), 66–69.
Watanabe, S.: 1969, Knowing and Guessing: a Quantitative Study of Inference and Information, Wiley, New York.
Wisdom, J. O.: 1952, Foundations of Inference in Natural Science, Methuen, London.
Wittgenstein, L.: 1958, The Blue and Brown Books, Harper & Row, New York.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bybee, M.D. Abductive inferences and the structure of scientific knowledge. Argumentation 10, 25–46 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00126157
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00126157