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From: cain@ics.uci.edu (Timothy Cain)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Abductive Reasoning
Message-ID: <28247EE4.25688@ics.uci.edu>
Date: 5 May 91 21:53:40 GMT
References: <1991May3.181328.16368@cs.ubc.ca> <1991May5.175755.24614@cs.cmu.edu>
Organization: UC Irvine Department of ICS
Lines: 40

In <1991May5.175755.24614@cs.cmu.edu> valdes+@cs.cmu.edu (Raul Valdes-Perez) writes:
>I would suggest some selective reading in Charles S. Peirce, "Essays in the 
>Philosophy of Science," American Heritage Series, 1957.
>I did some reading there, and discovered quite muddled uses of the term
>abduction by Peirce.  In one essay he seems to mean one thing, and in a
>second he means another.

This confusion arises because Peirce literally changed his mind on the
meaning of abduction after the first ten years or so. A great book
that summarizes Peirce's ideas is

   Author:        Fann, K. T., 1937-
   Title: Peirce's theory of abduction, by K. T. Fann. The Hague,
          Martinus Nijhoff, 1970.

This is also Fann's thesis from Illinois. I found this book to be very
useful in clearing up the confusion over the meaning of abduction.
Fann gives examples of its use and discusses how scientific discovery
could be modeled abductively.

I'll leave you with this quote from the book, demonstrating Einstein
performing abduction:

`Alexander King brought a photographer with him when he interviewed
Einstein. "While this character was reloading his camera, Mr. Einstein
looked at him earnestly for a moment and said, "you are one of many
children, aren't you?" "Yes, I have nine brothers and sisters. What
makes you ask" "I guessed it," said Mr. Einstein, "because it is
always hard to survive and to get proper attention in such a turmoil
of children.  Members of large families...don't expect to be seen or
to be heard unless they climb right into you lap...I suppose it is
probably the ideal training ground for a news photographer." Later,...
"I thought he was a mathematician," said the photographer. "I didn't
know he was Sherlock Holmes too"'. (p. 56-57).

Tim.
-- 
Timothy D. Cain
Department of Information and Computer Science  UC Irvine
                                          cain@ics.uci.edu             (ARPA)