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C. S. Peirce’s Conception of Abduction and Economics

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Handbook of Abductive Cognition

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Abstract

One of the most important contributions stemming from the thought and works of C. S. Peirce is his conception of abduction. Peirce is the American philosopher, scientist, mathematician, and occasional economist who most often viewed himself as a logician, and he is a co-founder of the American philosophy known as pragmatism. Peirce claims authorship for proposing the conception of abduction which was inspired by passages in Aristotle’s writings. An abduction is a provisional explanation which might account for a surprising or unexpected event. Abduction is one of three major reasoning processes according to Peirce. The others are deduction and induction. Additionally, one can identify an abduction-deduction-induction (ADI) sequence to scientific discovery. There is also a connection between abduction and economics. The link between economics and reasoning processes like abduction did not stem from Peirce’s contemporaneous interests in economics as such. Instead, Peirce imagined an “economy of research” or that processes of inquiry were also subject to economic considerations. In his writings, abduction is often placed next to or intertwined with an economic understanding of inquiry and scientific research. Certainly, one gets the impression that an ADI discovery process subject to available economic resources is what makes new knowledge possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Paul College of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA

    James R. Wible

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  1. James R. Wible
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Lorenzo Magnani

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  1. Dpto. de Economía, Universidad Nacional del Sur, INMABB-UNS-CONICET, Bahía Blanca, Argentina

    Fernando Tohmé

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Wible, J.R. (2022). C. S. Peirce’s Conception of Abduction and Economics. In: Magnani, L. (eds) Handbook of Abductive Cognition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68436-5_54-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68436-5_54-1

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