Robert}.

Roth
Anderson
on Peirce's Concept of Abduction:
Further Reflections
Douglas Anderson's recent article on Peirce's theory of abduction
is both informative and thought-provoking.
1
As he indicates at the
beginning of the article, he deals with two questions: the evolution of
Peircean abduction and its basis for scientific creativity as both insight
and inference. The latter problem is particularly interesting for it con-
fronts the critics of abduction who would claim that it excludes logi-
cal analysis, that it is fundamentally intuitionistic, and that Peirce
confuses the logical with the psychological. The author makes skill-
ful use of the relevant texts and in the main presents' a strong case
for his own position. While I myself am persuaded by Anderson's
arguments, I do feel that there are other aspects of abduction which
deserve consideration in order that it may be better understood. At
the same time, such a consideration may raise additional nervous ques-
tions and open the way for further objections on the part of Peirce's
critics.
2
The aspects of Anderson's position which I would like to explore
may be stated in two propositions which he discusses: (1) abduction
is an animal instinct, but (2) this does not entail a mechanical or
biological reduction of the abductive process, for "Peirce believes
that there must be a reason behind the conjecture made by abduction
and for him this presupposes some rational control of the process
by the scientist" (pp. 152-153). The purpose of this paper is briefly
to describe Anderson's defense of these propositions and to indicate
in what sense the defense, while on target, stands in need of further
development.
I
That Peirce held abduction to be an animal instinct is beyond
dispute and Anderson marshals the pertinent texts to substantiate
this point. The basic problem which Peirce was trying to solve was
132 Robert J. Roth
how the scientist can hit upon a hypothesis which would be sufficient
to explain a given happening in nature. Where does he begin? How does
he narrow down his options? As Peirce states:
Think of what trillions of trillions of hypotheses might
be made of which one only is true; and yet after two or
three or at the very most a dozen guesses, the physicist
hits pretty nearly on the correct hypothesis. By chance
he would not have been likely to do so in the whole time
that has elapsed since the earth was solidified. (5.172)3
Peirce indulges in a bit of fancy here for he asks how we could exclude
as explanations the conjunctions of the planets or some chance word
of mystical power pronounced by the dowager empress of China
or even the presence of some invisible jinnee. In another place, he
adds other possible explanations such as the day of the week on which
the phenomenon occurred, the blue dress worn by the scientist's
daughter, his dream of a white horse the night before, or the fact that
the milkman was late that morning (5.591). Fanciful indeed, but it
is Peirce's attempt, however maladroit, to make a point. He refuses
to have recourse to chance. He admits that one cannot give "any
exact reason for his best guesses" and he refers to some "magical
i faculty" (5.173, 6.476). Bu_^it appears to me that the clearest state-
/i ment we can make of tha logical situation - the freest from all ques-
tionable admixture - is to say that man has a certiri Insight, not
strong enough to be oftener right than wrong, but strong enough not
to be overwhelmingly more often wrong than right, into the Thirdness,
the general elements, of Nature*^^.,173). In other places he calls this
faculty a natural light, (a light of nature^, instinctive insight, genius,
or il lume natural? appealed to by Galileo and undoubtedly employed
by Kepler, Gilbert, Harvey, and Copernicus (5.604, 6.477, 1.80).
But basically and in the last analysis abduction is an instinct similar
to that found in the animal kingdom. Peirce uses the example of the
pecking instinct in chickens.
You cannot seriously think that every little chicken, that
is hatched, has to rummage through all possible theories
Anderson on Peirce's Concept of Abduction 133
until it lights upon the good idea of picking up something
and eating it. On the contrary, you think the chicken has
an innate idea of doing this; that is to say, that it can
think of this, but has no faculty of thinking anything
else. (5.591)
But if we attribute instinct to animals, why should we deny it to
humans? And here, I believe, it is necessary to go beyond Anderson's
treatment of abduction as instinct and to introduce an aspect of
Peirce's position which the author does not mention. It is the evolu-
tionary process which is at the basis of Peirce's whole philosophy.
Evolution in relation to abduction is mentioned briefly by Peirce
when he argues that chance cannot explain how the scientist narrows
down the trillions of possible explanations to a workable few. How
do we explain this ability?
i
You may produce this or that excellent psychological ;
account of the matter. But let me tell you that all the ,'
psychology in the world will leave the logical problem
just where it was. I might occupy hours developing that
point. I must pass it by. You may say that evolution
accounts for the thing. / don't doubt it is evolution. But
as for explaining evolution by chance, there has not been
time enough. (5.172 Italics added)
The connection between abduction as instinct and evolution is
briefly mentioned here. But I believe it is crucial. In other places,
Peirce wrote at length about evolution and his development is com-
plex. He discussed the theories of Darwin and Lamarck and used
the terminology of tychistic, anancastic, and gapas tic evolution
(1.13-1.17, 1.103-1.109, 6.287-6.317).
4
For the present discussion,
it is sufficient to note that for Peirce the human mind is a part of
nature and has emerged by the same evolutionary process. Conse-
quently there is a connaturality between mind and cosmos which
means that the mind has an affinity with nature, is attuned to it, and
has "a natural adaptation to imagining correct theories of some kinds,
134 Robert J. Roth
and in particular to correct theories about forces."
In short, the instincts conducive to assimilation of food,
and the instincts conducive to reproduction, must have
involved from the beginning certain tendencies to think
truly about physics, on the one hand, and about psychics,
on the other. It is somehow more than a figure of speech
to say that nature fecundates the mind of man with ideas
which, when those ideas grow up, will resemble their
father, Nature. (5.591)
For Peirce, evolution develops neither by chance (tychism) nor by
necessity (anancism) but by creative love (agapism). As Vincent Potter
states:
Consequently, the universe is not as the mechanistic philos-
ophers would have it. It is not governed solely nor princi-
pally by the laws of dynamics. It is governed by reasonable-
ness working itself out in the concrete. It has an intrinsic
and immanent finality which cannot be reduced to the
interaction of blind forces.
In this context, then, mind and nature develop together. Nature,
as it were, implants in the mind seeds of ideas that will mature in
accordance with nature, "Man's mind must have been attuned to the
truth of things in order to discover what he has discovered. It is the
very bedrock of logical truth" (6.476). From all this it follows that
abduction is not only linked with instinct but in turn it is also the
result of an evolutionary development which explains both the bio-
logical origin of humans and their ability to form hypotheses in logic.
II
The second proposition which I have selected from Anderson's
article states that abduction as instinct is not a mechanical or biological
reduction of the abductive process. This means that it does not immedi-
ately and always select the correct hypothesis nor does it make its
Anderson on Peirce's Concept of Abduction 135
selection automatically. Even instincts in animals make mistakes.
Abduction narrows the field of hypotheses to be considered. As
Anderson points out, citing Peirce, abduction is a "fair guess" (2.623),
an "extremely fallible insight" (5.181), "not strong enough to be
oftener right than wrong, but strong enough not to be overwhelmingly
more often wrong than right" (5.173). The tightness or wrongness
of the hypothesis is to be determined by induction.
But more importantly the selection of hypotheses is not automatic.
Thus Anderson states that "Peirce believes there must be a reason
behind the conjecture made by abduction and for him this presupposes
some rational control of the process by the scientist" (pp. 152-153.
See 5.108). But what could that rational control be? I am afraid that
Anderson does not adequately answer the question, or perhaps better,
Peirce himself is deficient on this point. Anderson refers to one text
to show that abduction does not begin de novo but is influenced
by previous thoughts and funded experience. Peirce's statement is
as follows: "But the stimulus to guessing, the hint of the conjecture,
was derived from experience" (2.755). This is a very brief and incon-
clusive text and I am not sure that it contains all that Anderson would
like to attribute to it. Yet he makes a good point in stressing funded
experience as a prerequisite for creativity. Even William James, who is
often accused of being an extreme relativist in his theory of knowledge,
emphasized the importance of old opinions in reaching solutions
to new problems. The new idea is grafted upon the old stock with
the least amount of change. The new idea mediates between the old
and new experience.
This new idea is then adopted as the true one. It preserves
the older stock of truths with a minimum of modifications,
stretching them just enough to make them admit the
novelty, but conceiving that in ways as familiar as the case
leaves possible. An outre explanation, violating all our
preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a
novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we
found something less eccentric. The most violent revolu-
tion in an individual's beliefs leaves most of his old order
136 Robert J. Roth
standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and
history, and one's own biography remain untouched.
New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of
transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever
to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.
John Dewey, too, could be mentioned in this context. As a matter
of fact, Anderson suggests that the move from funded experience to
hypothesis is similar to Dewey's viewpoint. It is at least questionable
whether a similarity between Peirce and Dewey can be drawn from
the above text of Peirce. I myself suspect that Peirce would agree
with Dewey but the agreement is not clearly stated. In any case,
Dewey, while not calling the hypothesis-forming process an instinct,
has stated more clearly than Peirce how the hypothesis is formed.
For Dewey, a problem arises out of an organized situation or experi-
ence which is beginning to disintegrate, to become unraveled, as it
were. Things were going along smoothly until some new element
arises which puzzles us because it does not seem to fit into our experi-
ence. Then even prior to conscious reflection, the parts of the experi-
ence strive toward integration and it is this which initiates the logical
process. As a result, a suggestion enters the mind spontaneously, it ~ ~ ~
pops into the mind. "It flashes upon us. There is no direct control
of its occurrence; the idea just comes or it does not come; that is all
that can be said."^ In Dewey's view, the occurrence of the suggestion
is not intellectual; it is what we do after its occurrence that we call /
intellectual. And of course what we do is to put the hypothesis to /
the test.
Again, in describing a disturbed situation, Dewey speaks of "intui-
tion." He puts the word in quotation marks because by it he does
not intend an act of the mind which is a priori without any relation
to experience.
"Intuition" is that meeting of the old and new in which
the readjustment involved in every form of consciousness
is effected suddenly by means of a quick and unexpected
harmony which in its bright abruptness is like a flash of
Anderson on Pence's Concept of Abduction 137
revelation; although in fact it is prepared by long and
slow incubation. Oftentimes the union of old and new,
of foreground and background, is accomplished by effort,
prolonged perhaps to the point of pain. In any case, the
background of organized meanings can alone convert the
new situation from the obscure into the clear and luminous.
When old and new jump together, like sparks when the
poles are adjusted, there is intuition. This latter is thus
neither an act of pure intellect in apprehending rational
truth nor a Crocean grasp by spirit of its own images
and states.
8
In Dewey's view, both observed facts and ideas are operational and
dynamic resulting in a series of interactions. Some facts point to an
idea as a possible solution; the idea in turn prompts more observation.
This interaction continues until the elements of the disorganized
experience are brought into harmony and a satisfactory solution
to the original problem is reached.
9
If my analyses of Peirce and Dewey are correct, it can be seen that
Dewey says both less and more than Peirce. He says less because ulti-
mately he leaves unanswered the question regarding the origin of the
tendency of the mind to form appropriate ideas. Humans are products
of evolution but they are not ends which evolution has been striving
to reach. They are merely termini resulting from the chance combi-
nations of biological forces. This is what Peirce would call tychism.
But Dewey claims that once the human mind emerges, it is capable
of projecting aims and goals with the result that purpose enters into
nature.
On the other hand, Dewey describes more fully the procedure
by which a solution is reached. He had the advantage of being ac-
quainted with the "new psychology" of the day and he was in a better
position to give a fuller account of the creative imagination. He
attempted to incorporate this information into his logic, philosophy,
and educational theory. At the same time, he did not allow logic and
a theory of knowledge to collapse into a psychological description
of mental processes. Neither did Peirce, and Anderson rightly defends
138 Robert J. Roth
him against his critics on this point (pp. 161-162). Finally in my view
both the Peircean and Deweyan positions are illuminating. But each
taken by itself is inadequate and leaves important questions unan-
swered. A more fruitful explanation could be found in a synthesis
of both positions.
As indicated at the outset, my purpose was to bring out other
aspects of Peirce's philosophy in order to view his theory of abduction
from a broader perspective. One may very well deny that all this is
necessary for a proper understanding of abduction. I myself believe
it is. At the same time, my own reflections may provide more ammuni-
tion for Peirce's critics who would seriously challenge his theory of
evolution and especially finality. These objections would have to
be confronted because evolution and finality .are essential elements
of Peirce's science, philosophy, and even of his logic.
Fordham University
NOTES
1. Douglas R. Anderson, "The Evolution of Peirce's Concept of
Abduction," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 22 (1986), pp. 145-
164.
2. The reader's attention is called to the article of Timothy Shanahan,
"The First Moment of Scientific Inquiry: C. S. Peirce on the Logic of Abduc-
tion," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 22 (1986), pp. 448-466.
While not specifically addressing Anderson's article, Shanahan brings out other
features of Peirce's theory of abduction, i.e., its instinctual basis, instinct and
its adaptive value, synechism, laws of nature and God's thought. My own treat-
ment concentrates on instinct and finality as important elements in abduction.
3. All references to Peirce are taken from The Collected Papers of
Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, and A. W. Burks, 8 vols.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931-35,1958).
4. See the fine treatment of this aspect of Peirce's thought by Vincent
G. Potter, S. J., Charles S. Peirce: On Norms and Ideals (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1967), Part III, Chap. 1, "Evolutionary Love."
5. Potter, Charles S. Peirce, p. 190. See 1.204.
6. William James, Pragmatism and Other Essays (N.Y.: Washington
Square Press, 1963), pp. 29-30. See also pp. 37, 95, 97, 103.
Anderson on Pence's Concept of Abduction 139
7. John Dewey, How We Think, tf^/ffl (N.Y.: ftytyHeath
and Company, 1933), p. 109.
8. John Dewey, Art as Experience (N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1934),
p. 266.
9. For a more extended treatment of Dewey's theory of logic, see
my John Dewey and Self-Realization (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
Inc. 1962), Chap. VII, especially pp. 135-138. Specifically I argue that Dewey,
without realizing it himself, intimated that nature exhibits a directed striving
and that the cosmos is in tune with human drives and ideas. Both mind and
nature cooperate in the attempt to achieve these ideals. However, in his explicit
statements Dewey does not admit this.
Charles S. Peirce
Logic and the Classification of Sciences
Beverley E. Kent
Closely examining both published and unpublished
writings of Peirce and carefully attending to the chrono-
logical development of his systems of classification, Kent
shows how seeming contradictions in Peirce's evolving
classification of logic are really part of an increasingly
clear position. $32.50
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