| |
|
C.S Peirce, I assume - American. His idea of "abduction" was originally a version of inference or hypothesis - essentially, accepting a conclusion on the grounds that it best explains the available evidence. So, if somebody comes into your house, and he has wet hair and is wearing galoshes, one could abduce that he had walked to your house in the rain.
It has another, far broader Peircian meaning, which I am a bit hazy on, but basically concerns the process of examining every available hypothesis and how one accepts or discards them, based on the assumption that the universe tends to continuity (synechism). So, I guess, it makes more sense to hypothesise that the hair is wet because it is raining than that it spontaneousloney became wet or was dampened by elves, both because walking through rain has observably made hair wet before and that the comprehended effect of rain is to make hair wet. Having recently wahed hair also makes hair wet, but walking through non-rain having just washed your hair does not necessitate galoshes, and so on. |
|
|
