The First Moment of Scientific Inquiry: C.S. Peirce on the Logic of Abduction

C. F. Delaney has suggested that the first or abductive phase of Peirce 's general characterization of scientific method can be distinguished into two "moments." The first is concerned with the original generation of those hypotheses which will form the set of potential explanations for the phenomena under consideration, and is a function of the creative imagination of some (gifted) individuals. As such it cannot be reduced to strict formulae or procedural rules. The second moment is concerned with the preferential ordering of the hypotheses in this set in relation to considerations bearing on the economy of re- search. This moment of the abductive phase is rule-governed, with features such as "simplicity" supplying the requisite selectory criteria. This distinction is a useful one for coming to understand more fully Peirce 's account of the abductive phase of inquiry in relation to the grounds of validity undergirding the scientific enterprise as he conceives it.

While Delaney's paper deals primarily (though not exclusively) with the second moment, the present paper focusses especially on the first moment, which is used as a point of departure for a more wide-ranging investigation of some of the characteristic features of Peirce 's thought related to his philosophies of mind and nature. Following a brief review of Peirce 's general theory of the stages of scientific inquiry, we proceed to examine his view of the role and importance of the abductive phase within the scientific enterprise. He thinks that this phase rests ultimately upon a particular faculty or instinct man possesses which permits him a certain insight into the most general structural features of nature. Since the scientific enterprise as he conceives it rests ultimately upon this faculty, it is appropriate to inquire further into the grounds of its validity. We shall suggest that Peirce offers at least three distinct explanatory accounts of this faculty. After discussing each of these accounts individually, we shall suggest how they can be seen as representing characteristic features of Peirce 's distinctive approach to human know- ledge. The working assumption throughout this paper will be that Peirce is an important philosopher whose often enigmatic remarks are nonetheless worth taking seriously. Such an attitude would seem to entail not only accurately presenting ideas from his various avail- able papers, but also attempting to draw together and relate some of these ideas to one another, to organize them in some fashion, in a way that he himself never did, in order to render explicit the potential unity and coherence of his thought. Rather than treating his scattered remarks as haphazard and unrelated to one another, there- fore, they will be seen as distinct threads woven into the fabric of his unified philosophy