Scientific constitutive abduction

Abstract

Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley used abductive reasoning to draw conclusions about the ionic basis of the action potential. Here we build on that initial proposal. First, we propose that Hodgkin and Huxley’s constitutive abductive reasoning has four features. Second, we argue that Hodgkin and Huxley are not alone in giving such arguments. Tolman, 1948, and Baumgartner, 1960, also gave such arguments. The implication is that such arguments are common enough in science that philosophers of science should pay more attention to them. Third, we propose that constitutive abduction describes a method that scientists use to confirm constitutive hypotheses that is an alternative to the mutual manipulability approach that is familiar in the New Mechanist literature.