Abduction: The Logic of Creativity

Abstract

C.S. Peirce made relevant contributions in very different fields, but he was primarily interested in the logic of science, and more especially in what he called ‘abduction’ – as opposed to deduction and induction – which is the process whereby hypotheses are generated in order to explain surprising facts (Nubiola 2005). Although there are stirrings of it in Aristotle’s notion of apagoge, the modern idea of abduction comes from Peirce (Woods 2017: 137). In fact, Peirce considered abduction to be at the heart not only of scientific research, but also of all ordinary human activities, and in particular artistic creativity (Barrena 2015). In this chapter, first, the nature of abduction will be explained, providing several key textual sources from Peirce’s manuscripts. Second, scientific and artistic creativity will be described in some detail, highlighting that imagination, which plays a central role in abduction, is at the heart of reasoning. Finally, a number of contemporary applications of abduction from the philosophy of science, artificial intelligence and logic will be mentioned. We point out the richness of Peirce’s conception of abduction that far surpasses the contemporary accounts of creativity.