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but as far as I know, nobody ever noticed them until about the 1960s. When I found them and wrote about them then, I couldnât find any earlier discussion of them. Those were pre-electronic days when you couldnât do a real database search, but I couldnât find any reference to Peirceâs theory of abduction. 28
Now the term abduction
is
used, Jerry Fodor has spoken about it and others, but it is a different sense; 29 it is not Peirceâs sense. Peirceâs sense was very straightforward and, I think, basically correct. He says you want to account for the fact that science does develop, and that people do hit upon theories which sort of seem to be true. He was also struck by the fact, and this is correct, that at a certain stage of science, a certain stage of understanding, everybody tends to come to the same theory, and if one person happens to come to it first, everybody else says âYes, thatâs right.â Why does that happen? You take any amount of data and innumerable theories can handle them, so how come you get this kind of convergence in a straight pattern through even what Thomas Kuhn called revolutions? 30
Letâs take, say, relativity theory, special relativity. When it came along in 1905, Einstein didnât have much empirical evidence. In fact, there was a great deal of experimentation done in the following years by all kinds of experimental scientists, who refuted it, and nobody paid any attention. They didnât pay any attention to the refutations, because it was obviously right. So even if it was refuted by a lot of experimentation, they disregarded the experiments. And that went on for many years. I remember years ago reading the BornâEinsteincorrespondence, and somewhere in the late 1920s (someone who knows more about this can correct me if I donât have it right, but it is something like this) a very famous American experimental physicist redid the MichelsonâMorley experiment, which had provided the main evidence, and it came out the wrong way. And Born wrote to Einstein and he said âLook, do you think Iâd better go over to this guyâs lab and find out what mistake he made?â And Einstein said âNo, it is probably not worth it. Somebody will probably figure it out sooner or later.â 31 But the point is he didnât even pay any attention to the refutation of the MichelsonâMorley experiment because it couldnât be right. And it couldnât be right for conceptual reasons.
That is pretty much the way science often seems to work. It is true even in our areas. You just see that some ideas simply look right, and then you sort of put aside the data that refute them and think, somebody else will take care of it. Well, Peirce was interested in that, and he asked how it happened, and I think he gave the right answer. He says we have an instinct. He says it is like a chicken pecking. We just have an instinct that says this is the way you do science. And if you look at the famous scientists reflecting, that is what they say. I remember once I was at the Institute for Advanced Studies and Dirac was giving a lecture, so I went out of curiosity. Of course I didnât know what he was talking about, but in the lecture some hotshot mathematician got up and said âYou made a mathematical error in a particular point,â and Dirac said âOkay, you figure out what the mistake is, Iâm going on with this, because this is the way it has to be.â Well, that is sort of the way things work. 32 Peirceâs answer is that there is some kind of instinct, the abductive instinct, which sets limits on permissible hypotheses and says these kinds are explanatory theories, but this other kind are not, even if they work.
And that leads us onward somehow. Peirce argued that if you keep on this track indefinitely, you eventually reach truth. He thought that truth is sort of defined as the limit of scientific experimentation, and
Now the term abduction
is
used, Jerry Fodor has spoken about it and others, but it is a different sense; 29 it is not Peirceâs sense. Peirceâs sense was very straightforward and, I think, basically correct. He says you want to account for the fact that science does develop, and that people do hit upon theories which sort of seem to be true. He was also struck by the fact, and this is correct, that at a certain stage of science, a certain stage of understanding, everybody tends to come to the same theory, and if one person happens to come to it first, everybody else says âYes, thatâs right.â Why does that happen? You take any amount of data and innumerable theories can handle them, so how come you get this kind of convergence in a straight pattern through even what Thomas Kuhn called revolutions? 30
Letâs take, say, relativity theory, special relativity. When it came along in 1905, Einstein didnât have much empirical evidence. In fact, there was a great deal of experimentation done in the following years by all kinds of experimental scientists, who refuted it, and nobody paid any attention. They didnât pay any attention to the refutations, because it was obviously right. So even if it was refuted by a lot of experimentation, they disregarded the experiments. And that went on for many years. I remember years ago reading the BornâEinsteincorrespondence, and somewhere in the late 1920s (someone who knows more about this can correct me if I donât have it right, but it is something like this) a very famous American experimental physicist redid the MichelsonâMorley experiment, which had provided the main evidence, and it came out the wrong way. And Born wrote to Einstein and he said âLook, do you think Iâd better go over to this guyâs lab and find out what mistake he made?â And Einstein said âNo, it is probably not worth it. Somebody will probably figure it out sooner or later.â 31 But the point is he didnât even pay any attention to the refutation of the MichelsonâMorley experiment because it couldnât be right. And it couldnât be right for conceptual reasons.
That is pretty much the way science often seems to work. It is true even in our areas. You just see that some ideas simply look right, and then you sort of put aside the data that refute them and think, somebody else will take care of it. Well, Peirce was interested in that, and he asked how it happened, and I think he gave the right answer. He says we have an instinct. He says it is like a chicken pecking. We just have an instinct that says this is the way you do science. And if you look at the famous scientists reflecting, that is what they say. I remember once I was at the Institute for Advanced Studies and Dirac was giving a lecture, so I went out of curiosity. Of course I didnât know what he was talking about, but in the lecture some hotshot mathematician got up and said âYou made a mathematical error in a particular point,â and Dirac said âOkay, you figure out what the mistake is, Iâm going on with this, because this is the way it has to be.â Well, that is sort of the way things work. 32 Peirceâs answer is that there is some kind of instinct, the abductive instinct, which sets limits on permissible hypotheses and says these kinds are explanatory theories, but this other kind are not, even if they work.
And that leads us onward somehow. Peirce argued that if you keep on this track indefinitely, you eventually reach truth. He thought that truth is sort of defined as the limit of scientific experimentation, and
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