Abstract
In philosophy of science, the literature on abduction and the literature on styles of thinking have existed almost totally in parallel. Here, for the first time, we bring them together and explore their mutual relevance. What is the consequence of the existence of several styles of scientific thinking for abduction? Can abduction, as a general creative mode of inference, have distinct characteristic forms within each style? To investigate this, firstly, we present the concept of abduction; secondly we analyze what is understood by styles of thinking; thirdly, we give some comments on abduction and styles of thinking by analyzing examples of scientific discovery or innovation within each style. We develop a case-based comparative investigation of creative aspects of abductive reasoning with examples drawn from different styles of scientific thinking and doing as understood by the Crombie/Hacking tradition. We argue that abduction, as a general mode of reasoning, can have a variety of specific expressions enabled and constrained by the styles of scientific thinking. Finally, we draw some conclusions on the relationship between abduction and styles of thinking suggesting that scientific discovery is a dynamical goal-directed activity within the scientific community that benefits from distinct styles of thinking and doing research.
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Notes
The metaphysical and pragmaticist realism of Peirce differs from Hacking’s so-called entity realism, though also Hacking (e.g., Hacking 1992a) claims a version of metaphysical realism. It is not, however, our aim to analyze their different versions.
One part of Kusch (2010) criticism goes in the direction of questioning to what extent Crombie’s list is a relevant starting point to the philosophical discussion of styles. Kusch claims that “Hacking has not offered a satisfactory rationale for individuating styles;” (ibid., p. 164) and “Sometimes he writes as if Crombie’s list were definitive, sometimes he adds the laboratory style, sometimes he leaves open the possibility that any number of further styles might be discovered.” (ibid., p. 170). It is beyond the scope of this paper to address this issue further.
It is common to find in the literature on philosophy of science the concept of abduction as synonymous with Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) as well as attempts to formalize abductive reasoning (for a brief historical summary of these attempts see Aliseda 2017, p. 219). It is important to highlight that our analysis of abduction is based on Peirce’s pragmaticism and as such we differentiate abduction from IBE (to be understood as a kind of induction—more precisely qualitative induction in Peirce’s vocabulary). However, it is not the aim of this paper to discuss the difference between abduction and IBE (for an account of this difference see Minnameier 2004, 2017; Paavola 2006; and Campos 2011).
Here we agree with Ruphy (2011 p. 1219, emphasis by the author) that a SoT&D do not create new objects but enrich ontologically the studied objects: “I suggest that the introduction of new kinds of entities gives rise to an ontological enrichment of the objects studied by science, to the extent that the use in scientific practice of different styles of reasoning widens and diversifies the classes of propositions that can be true or false about them”.
A clade is an evolutionary ‘branch’.
However, this new and enriched meaning of the term reptile, as discovered by paleontology and evolutionary biology, is not corresponding with the vernacular everyday meaning of reptiles. People may still refer to an extinct dinosaur or an extant snake or turtle without realizing that by calling this creature “reptile” they put it (in the scientific sense) into a group of organisms to which also birds belong.
This discovery was not accepted by the scientific community of that time. Linus Pauling, an expert on the area and Nobel prize chemist, denied Shechtman’ discovery stating that: “there is no such thing as quasi-crystals, only quasi-scientists” (Shechtman 2013, pp. 2 and 5).
In “'Language, Truth and Reason' 30 years later” (2012, p. 603), Hacking abandons the laboratory style stressing that: “The advent of the laboratory is a radical eruption, but Occam’s razor moves us to regard it as a crystallization within Crombie’s second style [experimental], rather than a new style.” (Hacking 2012, p. 603).
Shechtman ran two experiments to eliminate his first hypothesis according to which the compound formed a twin-crystal, what, if true, could explain the anomaly without denying the laws of crystallography at that time. He does not describe this step in his 2013 paper, but he does so in the public lecture “The Discovery of Quasicrystals” held at Uppsala University December 13, 2011 (from minute 17 here: https://youtu.be/oa1GMwXuBwo), see also his Nobel Lecture, December 8, 2011 (here: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2011/shechtman/).
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Acknowledgements
The research was supported by the University of Copenhagen and CAPES Grant No. 99999.001457/2015-02. For important comments and criticism we thank Henrik Kragh Sørensen, Joeri Witteveen, Sara Green, Mikkel Willum Johansen, Robert Innis and Cassiano Terra Rodrigues. We also would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.
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Vitti Rodrigues, M., Emmeche, C. Abduction and styles of scientific thinking. Synthese 198, 1397–1425 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02127-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02127-7