Theoretical Abduction

Abstract

Philosophers of science in the twentieth century have traditionally distinguished between the logic of discovery and the logic of justification. Most have concluded that no logic of discovery exists and, moreover, that a rational model of discovery is impossible. In short, scientific discovery is irrational and there is no reasoning to hypotheses. A new abstraction paradigm aimed at unifying the different perspectives and providing some design insights for future ones is proposed here: the aim of this book is to emphasize the significance of abduction in order to illustrate the problem-solving process and to propose a unified epistemological model of scientific discovery (this chapter and chapters 6 and 7), diagnostic reasoning (chapter 4), and other kinds of creative reasoning (chapter 5).