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Understanding Natural Science Based on Abductive Inference: Continental Drift

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Abstract

This study aims to understand scientific inference for the evolutionary procedure of Continental Drift based on abductive inference, which is important for creative inference and scientific discovery during problem solving. We present the following two research problems: (1) we suggest a scientific inference procedure as well as various strategies and a criterion for choosing hypotheses over other competing or previous hypotheses; aspects of this procedure include puzzling observation, abduction, retroduction, updating, deduction, induction, and recycle; and (2) we analyze the “theory of continental drift” discovery, called the Earth science revolution, using our multistage inference procedure. Wegener’s Continental Drift hypothesis had an impact comparable to the revolution caused by Darwin’s theory of evolution in biology. Finally, the suggested inquiry inference model can provide us with a more consistent view of science and promote a deeper understanding of scientific concepts.

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Notes

  1. Gabbay and Woods (2005 p. 120) later applied it to non-monotonic reasoning as instrumental value. Thagard (2010) recently argued that a term such as “gabuction” could be used be used to cover the generalized notion of abduction.

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  1. Hanyang University, Seoul, 133-791, Republic of Korea

    Jun-Young Oh

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Oh, JY. Understanding Natural Science Based on Abductive Inference: Continental Drift. Found Sci 19, 153–174 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-013-9322-2

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