This book examines the philosophical conception of abductive reasoning as developed by Charles S. Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism. It explores the historical and systematic connections of Peirce's original ideas and debates about their interpretations. Abduction is understood in a broad sense which covers the discovery and pursuit of hypotheses and inference to the best explanation. The analysis presents fresh insights into this notion of reasoning, which derives from effects to causes or from surprising observations to explanatory theories. The (...) author outlines some logical and AI approaches to abduction as well as studies various kinds of inverse problems in astronomy, physics, medicine, biology, and human sciences to provide examples of retroductions and abductions. The discussion covers also everyday examples with the implication of this notion in detective stories, one of Peirce’s own favorite themes. The author uses Bayesian probabilities to argue that explanatory abduction is a method of confirmation. He uses his own account of truth approximation to reformulate abduction as inference which leads to the truthlikeness of its conclusion. This allows a powerful abductive defense of scientific realism. This up-to-date survey and defense of the Peircean view of abduction may very well help researchers, students, and philosophers better understand the logic of truth-seeking. (shrink)

Phylogenetic models traditionally represent the history of life as having a strictly-branching tree structure. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the history of life is often not strictly-branching; lateral gene transfer, endosymbiosis, and hybridization, for example, can all produce lateral branching events. There is thus motivation to allow phylogenetic models to have a reticulate structure. One proposal involves the reconciliation of genealogical discordance. Briefly, this method uses patterns of disagreement – discordance – between trees of different genes to add (...) lateral branching events to phylogenetic trees of taxa, and to estimate the most likely cause of these events. I use this practice to argue for: (1) a need for expanded accounts of multiple-models idealization, (2) a distinction between automatic and manual de-idealization, and (3) recognition that idealization may serve the meso-level aims of science in a different way than hitherto acknowledged. (shrink)

The present work analyzes the controversy within biological systematics regarding the status of cladistics. The use of the parsimony method for phylogenetic reconstruction has been defended by appealing to a methodological principle of simplicity, as well as to empirical principles that external to systematics. I propose new kind of approach, which consists in considering it an empirical theory, thus justifying its application by its empirical success. To defend this point, a formal structuralist reconstruction of cladistics will be provided, which will (...) help clarify what its central empirical statements are. At the same time, I show how these principles have been used to test that theory using experimental phylogenies. (shrink)

The term “cladist” has distinct meanings in distinct contexts. Communication between philosophers, historians, and biologists has been hindered by different understandings of the term in various contexts. In this paper I trace historical and conceptual connections between several broadly distinct senses of the term “cladist”. I propose seven specific definitions that capture distinct contemporary uses. This serves to disambiguate some cases where the meaning is unclear, and will help resolve apparent disagreements that in fact result from conflicting understandings of the (...) term. (shrink)

We analyze the relationship between evolutionary theory and classification of higher taxa in the work of three ichthyologists: Albert C.L.G. Günther (1830–1914), Edward Drinker Cope (1840–1897), and Theodore Gill (1837–1914). The progress of ichthyology in the early years following the Origin has received little attention from historians, and offers an opportunity to further evaluate the extent to which evolutionary theorizing influenced published views on systematic methodology. These three ichthyologists held radically different theoretical views. The apparent commensurability of claims about relationships (...) among groups of fishes belies differences in what the relationships actually were supposed to be. As well, interpreting classification as genealogical did not lead to agreement about taxonomic methodology; instead, applying evolutionary theory raised new axes of disagreement. (shrink)