(There is a tendency among the Europeans to dismiss the intellectual achievements of the United States as if the American life were solely about making money, and all higher pursuits of the mind were somehow foreign to the family of Uncle Sam. This one-sided view of America is a very mean and most unfair caricature, as this great nation surely has a lot of other things to be proud of, aside from her present-day military and economic might.
It is, therefore, not merely to edify the reader with some lesser known trivia that I have undertaken to devote a number of entries to certain exceptional American individuals, but, in a way, to battle that ugly stereotype.
For more on the tragic life and outstanding scientific and philosophical legacy of C. S. Peirce (1839-1914), see my entry An American Tragedy, in the American section [to be posted later]. But this particular entry is not so much about this great American as it is about an interesting scientific/philosophical hypothesis which he offers to the inquisitive mind. Well, here it is, with an appreciative comment from me.)
Charles Sanders Peirce was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist, credited as the founder of the philosophy of Pragmatism and of modern Semiotics, yet until recently almost completely unknown. It was only in 1959 that Bertrand Russell, having discovered some of Peirce’s remarkable writings, would call him “one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century, and certainly the greatest American thinker ever.” Karl Popper in 1972 called Peirce “one of the greatest philosophers of all time.”
In other words, here is definitely a man worth learning about. And, as I said earlier, I have written much more about him in the American section. This entry, however, touches upon just one aspect of Peirce’s legacy, maybe not the most important one, but eminently instructive and vastly entertaining. Deduction and induction as methods of philosophical analysis had been known for ages before Peirce, but the addition of “abduction” to these two was his own invention.
Imagine a situation where we are dealing with two sets of balls: a larger one, which is the pool, and a smaller one, which is presumably a random sample of the larger one. If we know that the balls in the larger set are all red, we conclude that the balls in the sample set are red as well. This is deduction.
Now, if we know that the balls in the sample set are all red, we may assume that all the balls in the sampled set are red as well. This is, of course, an arguable proposition, but this is what we call induction.
But we have not exhausted our logical possibilities yet, and here comes Peirce with his interesting argument concerning the link between the two sets. Imagine that having these two sets, we find all balls in them red. Is it possible to assume that the smaller set of red balls comes out of the larger set of completely similar balls? At least, this is a reasonable guess, tenable as a working hypothesis, and Peirce calls it abduction.
Someone not quite adept in logic may ask about the utility of having such a hypothesis at all, seeing that its premise is even more questionable than the second one of the triad. (Nobody questions the validity of the first logical proposition, of course.) It is true that the third hypothesis is pretty shaky, but so is the second one, and yet, known as induction, its value as a legitimate methodological tool has long been established. After all, excluding foolproof deduction, we are dealing with hypotheses, which can be exposed as false at any time, but the beauty of them is that, for as long as they have not been exposed as such, we can assume them to be true, thus setting in motion the whole essential mechanism of philosophical inquiry, reminding me somewhat of the Hegelian epistemological triad of hypothesis, its eventual refutation, and the forming, as a result, of a much superior hypothesis, waiting to be eventually refuted as well, but on a higher level of intellectual sophistication.
Having presented this procedure in such terms, it must be clear now why Peirce’s "abduction" becomes such a useful new methodological tool. I will let the reader think about this, as by now it is fairly easy to figure out.
It is, therefore, not merely to edify the reader with some lesser known trivia that I have undertaken to devote a number of entries to certain exceptional American individuals, but, in a way, to battle that ugly stereotype.
For more on the tragic life and outstanding scientific and philosophical legacy of C. S. Peirce (1839-1914), see my entry An American Tragedy, in the American section [to be posted later]. But this particular entry is not so much about this great American as it is about an interesting scientific/philosophical hypothesis which he offers to the inquisitive mind. Well, here it is, with an appreciative comment from me.)
Charles Sanders Peirce was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist, credited as the founder of the philosophy of Pragmatism and of modern Semiotics, yet until recently almost completely unknown. It was only in 1959 that Bertrand Russell, having discovered some of Peirce’s remarkable writings, would call him “one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century, and certainly the greatest American thinker ever.” Karl Popper in 1972 called Peirce “one of the greatest philosophers of all time.”
In other words, here is definitely a man worth learning about. And, as I said earlier, I have written much more about him in the American section. This entry, however, touches upon just one aspect of Peirce’s legacy, maybe not the most important one, but eminently instructive and vastly entertaining. Deduction and induction as methods of philosophical analysis had been known for ages before Peirce, but the addition of “abduction” to these two was his own invention.
Imagine a situation where we are dealing with two sets of balls: a larger one, which is the pool, and a smaller one, which is presumably a random sample of the larger one. If we know that the balls in the larger set are all red, we conclude that the balls in the sample set are red as well. This is deduction.
Now, if we know that the balls in the sample set are all red, we may assume that all the balls in the sampled set are red as well. This is, of course, an arguable proposition, but this is what we call induction.
But we have not exhausted our logical possibilities yet, and here comes Peirce with his interesting argument concerning the link between the two sets. Imagine that having these two sets, we find all balls in them red. Is it possible to assume that the smaller set of red balls comes out of the larger set of completely similar balls? At least, this is a reasonable guess, tenable as a working hypothesis, and Peirce calls it abduction.
Someone not quite adept in logic may ask about the utility of having such a hypothesis at all, seeing that its premise is even more questionable than the second one of the triad. (Nobody questions the validity of the first logical proposition, of course.) It is true that the third hypothesis is pretty shaky, but so is the second one, and yet, known as induction, its value as a legitimate methodological tool has long been established. After all, excluding foolproof deduction, we are dealing with hypotheses, which can be exposed as false at any time, but the beauty of them is that, for as long as they have not been exposed as such, we can assume them to be true, thus setting in motion the whole essential mechanism of philosophical inquiry, reminding me somewhat of the Hegelian epistemological triad of hypothesis, its eventual refutation, and the forming, as a result, of a much superior hypothesis, waiting to be eventually refuted as well, but on a higher level of intellectual sophistication.
Having presented this procedure in such terms, it must be clear now why Peirce’s "abduction" becomes such a useful new methodological tool. I will let the reader think about this, as by now it is fairly easy to figure out.
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