Abduction

Abstract

There are in science three fundamentally different kinds of reasoning, Deduction (called by Aristotle {synagögé} or {anagögé}), Induction (Aristotle’s and Plato’s {epagögé}) and Retroduction (Aristotle’s {apagögé}, but misunderstood because of corrupt text, and as misunderstood usually translated abduction). Besides these three, Analogy (Aristotle’s {paradeigma}) combines the characters of Induction and Retroduction.