Dear all,
A couple of years ago I did some work to address abduction, and I never published as my attention was taken into the notion of ‘framing’. I came to believe that the theoretical discussion about abduction helped me little in understanding how design thinking actually works.
Below you’ll find my unpublished excerpt from 2010 about abduction.
Kind regards,
Dr. Salu Ylirisku
Leader of the Embodied Design Group
http://designresearch.aalto.fi/groups/edg/
Papers can be found here:
https://aalto-fi.academia.edu/SaluYlirisku
—
Recently an increasing amount of studies have begun to build on the idea of abductive reasoning, e.g. (Roozenburg, 1993), (Martin, 2010), (Kolko, 2010). This section argues that the notion abductive logic, which is typically associated with C.S. Peirce, is used in design research in the way of a silver bullet, it helps to get rid of all the problems at once. For example, abduction has been used as an umbrella to avoid the truly difficult task of explaining what happens, when designers bring coherence to situations, which may appear at first somewhat chaotic, see (Kolko, 2010). This is crystallised in the following quote from (Martin, 2010) (pp. 40-41):
“Abductive reasoning is a concept developed by philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, and advanced as a third form of reasoning alongside deduction and induction. Deductive (from the general to the specific) and inductive (from the specific to the general) reasoning are both grounded in the scientific tradition and allow the analyst to marshal established principles or existing data to converge on particular conclusions. Peirce’s important insight was that it is not possible to prove any new thought, concept or idea in advance. So to advance knowledge, we must turn away from our standard definitions of proof – and from the false certainty of the past – and instead stare into the mystery of what could be. The answer, Peirce believed, would come through making a ‘‘logical leap of the mind’’ or an ‘‘inference to the best explanation’’ to imagine a heuristic for understanding the mystery.”
These accounts give us little theoretical assistance to develop our own abductive reasoning efforts. The methods listed by (Kolko, 2010) appear not more than a way that designers often use for getting around the dilemma. If we look at Peirce’s original accounts[i], we shall see that he had made an observation that scientists come at their initial hypotheses from somewhere, and this somewhere might have a logic of its own. The most comprehensive explanation to abduction Peirce gave in his seventh Harvard Lecture on 1903 (Peirce, 1998a), which is posthumously titled “Pragmatism as the Logic of Abduction” by the editors. This titling is suggestive to the central role that the notion of abduction has for the development of pragmatism, or pragmaticism, as Peirce himself called it, since it is “ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers,” (Peirce, 1998b) unlike the word pragmatism, which had already gained substantial attention, but which had become ambiguous due to many authors using it differently. It is interesting, nevertheless, that abduction did not raise philosophers’ interest even within the major pragmatists. For example, John Dewey does not mention abduction at all in his writings (Paavola, 2006).
Despite of several attempts to articulate abduction, it has largely remained as a concept that points towards an important area for discovery, which still has remained unexplained satisfactorily. Abduction has not yet been able to function as an explanation, if we look at the research it has sparked (Roozenburg, 1993), (Kolko, 2010), (Paavola, 2006) but rather remained as a sensitising concept. No further Peirce got with this term, if we look at the effect Peirce’s writings have so far had. Paavola (ibid.) enlists tens of competing interpretations and various alterations of abductive reasoning, which justifies to this. Thus, it does not make sense to begin our exploration with the notion of abduction, but perhaps, to conclude into it, if we are successful in the current exploration.
(Peirce, 1998a) (p. 231) presents the form of inference that takes place in abductive reasoning in the following syllogism:
The surprising fact, C, is observed;
But if A were true, C would be a matter of course.
Hence, there is a reason to suspect that A is true.
Let us return to this definition after considering a little story, which may help to understand what this may mean practically. A father makes an experiment with a bag, where he puts 10 raisings and 10 peanuts, and asks his daughter to pick up five items from the bag. She gets peanut, peanut, raisin, peanut, and a raisin. In total thee peanuts and two raisins. On the basis of deductive logic we could now say that there must then be three raisins and two peanuts in the bag, and thus that it will be more likely that we will get raisins from this bag if we still keep picking. However, if we would follow inductive logic, we would say that it is more likely to get peanuts from this bag, since it appears to be catering more of those. Then the little sister comes by and eats the peanuts and raisins. The big sister looks puzzled, but after all, she will get to eat the rest. This is how abductive reasoning comes into the situation.
The point of the story is that reasoning depends on the framing in which the logics operate. When the little sister eats the peanuts and raisins, they become adopted – or abducted – into a different system of meanings, into the ecology of life where peanuts and raisins are food, and they were treated in a manner that is logical within this system. In terms of the above syllogism by Peirce, the surprising fact C is the eating of the peanuts and raisins. We may believe that A refers to the frame, where peanuts and raisins are food, not artefacts to explain logic. And hence C is a matter of course for a person, who loves peanuts and raisins, to eat these. If we articulate the syllogism with the terms of the example, the logic hopefully becomes clear:
A surprising fact that little sister eats the demonstrative artefacts is observed;
But if it is true that little sister thinks these are food, the eating is a matter of course.
Hence, there is a reason to suspect that little sister thinks these are food.
It is important to note that the thought "to consider the peanuts and raisins as food" becomes thought by the father and big sister, who were doing something else with the materials. They were functioning in the education frame to explore how different kinds of logic might explain the situation. As soon as this new way to think about the situation arises, the material becomes attractive in another way, and through another frame. Abductive reasoning is based on the frame transitions which people do.
Schön (1983, p. 181) writes “The discovery of new hypotheses occurs repeatedly in a process aimed primarily at design, and hypothesis-testing experiment leads repeatedly to invention.”
--
[i] (Peirce, 1955) in the “abduction and induction” writes: “The first stating of a hypothesis and the entertaining of it, whether as a simple interrogation or with any degree of confidence, is an inferential step which I propose to call abduction. .. I call all such inference by the peculiar name, abduction, because its legitimacy depends upon altogether different principles from those of other kinds of inference.” Peirce also used the term ‘retroduction’ to refer to this kind of inference. With this he explained Kepler’s procedure in discovering the laws of planetary motion. The key moment in Kepler’s work was that he thought that sun has to do with causing the planets to move in their orbits.
References:
Kolko, J. (2010). Abductive Thinking and Sensemaking: The Drivers of Design Synthesis. Design Issues, 26 (1), 15–28. Massachussetts Institute of Technology.
Martin, R. (2010). Design thinking: achieving insights via the “knowledge funnel.” Strategy & Leadership, 38(2), 37–41. doi:10.1108/10878571011029046
Paavola, S. (2006). On the Origin of Ideas: An Abductivist Approach to Discovery. Philosophical Studies from the University of Helsinki. Helsinki: Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki.
Peirce, C. S. (1955). Abduction and Induction. In J. Buchler (Ed.), Philosophical Writings of Peirce (pp. 150–156). Mineola, NY, USA: Dover Publications Inc.
Peirce, C. S. (1998a). Pragmatism ad the Logic of Abduction (Lecture VII). In The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings (pp. 226–241). Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press.
Peirce, C. S. (1998b). What Pragmatism Is. In The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings (pp. 332–345). Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press.
Roozenburg, N. F. M. (1993). On the pattern of reasoning in innovative design. Design Studies, 14(1), 4–18. doi:10.1016/S0142-694X(05)80002-X
Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.
On 11 Feb 2015, at 06:30, Johann van der Merwe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Nicolai
> Good example ... I have always maintained that designers (in putting on
> their thinking hats) use both induction & deduction, which then leads them
> to the abductive stage where "discoveries" are made ... (e.g., implicit
> becomes explicit and in the process abduction or discovery is "let out")
>
> ... and since all theories of / for design thinking should be "weak"
> theories (in the sense of not conclusive; not "proven"; cast in stone) as
> opposed to hard / strong scientific theories, I agree with "Does not rely
> on strong theory building", which does not mean that designers do not
> utilise these (strong and/or scientific) theories, e.g., this material
> behaves like this or that under those circumstances; X-grade concrete for
> this purpose is made using the following formula ... when designing a new
> axe for the far northern logging industry the metal needs to withstand -50C
> temps, etc.
>
> Abductive reasoning (based on weak theoretical inputs & outputs) for and in
> design thinking focuses on the what and wherefore of what people believe,
> what they like, what they expect, their emotions during use, all these
> human "foibles" if you like, that have an enormous influence on the design
> (and design process) itself ... abduction used as a weak theory is the
> "hunched" hypothesis that can give form and direction to a wicked problem
> space, and allied to "scientific" and proven knowledge can help fashion a
> successful product (as long as the "weak thinking" is always allowed to be
> present to remind the designer that a product always functions within a
> human, aka "weak" & prone to change environment).
>
> Johann
>
> On 10 February 2015 at 22:22, Nicolai Steinø <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Some years back I did an urban design workshop with Thai and Danish BSc
>> students at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. I used the example below to
>> explain abduction, as opposed to deduction and induction. I find the
>> example useful because it explains the difference by the order of a rule, a
>> case and a result, respectively.
>>
>> Unfortunately I no longer remember where I got it from.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Nic
>>
>> --
>>
>> Research approach
>>
>> American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce
>>
>> Deduction (necessary inferences)
>>
>> Rule All thai people have dark hair
>> Case All the people we have met are thai
>> Result Therefore, all people we have met have dark hair
>>
>> Induction (probable inferences)
>>
>> Result All people we have met have dark hair
>> Case All the people we have met are thai
>> Rule Therefore, all thai people have dark hair
>>
>> Abduction (hypotheses)
>>
>> Rule All thai people have dark hair
>> Result All people we have met have dark hair
>> Case Therefore, all the people we have met are thai
>>
>> Pros and cons of abduction
>>
>> Does not rely on strong theory building
>> Does not rely on large samples
>> Requires a capacity for making 'hunches'
>> The validity of the conclusion relies on the quality of the hunch
>>
>>
>>
>> NICOLAI STEINØ
>> Associate Professor, PhD, GDBA
>>
>> AALBORG UNIVERSITY
>> DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN and MEDIA TECHNOLOGY
>> Rendsborggade 14 · DK - 9000 AALBORG
>>
>> Office: 6.330a
>> Office hours: By appointment only
>>
>> TEL: (+45) 99 40 71 36
>> CELL: (+45) 28 76 06 98
>>
>> eMail: [log in to unmask]
>> <applewebdata:[log in to unmask]>
>> Staff profile: http://personprofil.aau.dk/Profil/107588?languageId=1
>> Homepage: http://homes.create.aau.dk/steino
>> Blog: http://steino.wordpress.com
>> Academia: http://aalborg.academia.edu/NicolaiSteinø<
>> http://aalborg.academia.edu/NicolaiStein%C3%B8>
>>
>>
>>
>> Den 10/02/2015 kl. 20.29 skrev Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]
>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>:
>>
>> Dear Terry and all,
>>
>> Abduction is essentially a mode of forming hypotheses. Technically,
>> abduction is “inference to best explanation.” This entails many issues —
>> with room for debate. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy offers an
>> excellent article on abduction, with a good reference list and sources of
>> additional information:
>>
>> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abduction/
>>
>> While C. S. Peirce wrote at length on abduction, he was not the first to
>> do so earlier or since. The phenomenon has long been described in different
>> ways. The crucial issue is that abduction is a logic of discovery.
>> Abductive inference is not a logic of proof — one requires other means to
>> determine the validity or facticity of abductive inference.
>>
>> This is why abduction is one method of hypothesis formation. Generating
>> hypotheses is a necessary step in discovery, but for everything human
>> beings have learned, there have been more false or incorrect hypotheses
>> than true or correct hypotheses.
>>
>> In recent articles and reports, I have seen the incorrect assertion that
>> scientific research makes use of induction and deduction while design
>> research makes use of abduction. This is incorrect. Scientists use
>> abduction to form hypotheses, and researchers in all fields require
>> induction and deduction — as well as experiment and observation — to choose
>> among hypotheses.
>>
>> Peirce and others treat abduction as a way of knowing, but not as a way of
>> validating the knowledge. This requires other methods.
>>
>> For those who wish to read further, I have a DropBox collection of
>> articles on abduction in PDF format. If you wish access to the collection,
>> send me an off-list email and I will be happy to grant access to the
>> collection.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Ken
>>
>> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The
>> Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in
>> Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015
>>
>> Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and
>> Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University
>> Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne
>> University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
>>
>> Email [log in to unmask] | Academia
>> http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Johann van der Merwe
> Independent Design Researcher
>
>
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