Dear professor Burnette, my ongoing doctoral Thesis is about *abduction* (in the way that Ch. S. Peirce defines it) and its scope within the projectual process. As you certainly know, several authors, within design field, have mentioned abductive reasoning in order to explain what happens in the creative process; for instance: - Nigel Cross (*Designerly ways of knowing*, 2007) do mention abduction as a kind of reasoning designers do (p. 28, 37, 53) and also relates abduction with the "creative leap" (chapter: 4. CREATIVE COGNITION IN DESIGN I: THE CREATIVE LEAP, p. 76) - John Kolko, *Abductive Thinking and Sensemaking: The Drivers of Design Synthesis* - Design Issues: Volume 26, Number 1, Winter 2010 - MIT But, other scholars from education field, and philosophy of science have detected the relation between abduction and design research, like: - Pentti Määttänen, links pragmatic semiotics to the context of design research (*Pragmatist Semiotics as a Framework for Design Research*, Milano 2000) - Gavin Melles, has addressed the relationship between pragmatism and design, both in education and in research, in several publications from 2008 to date. (*An enlarged pragmatist inquiry paradigm for Methodological pluralism in **academic design research*, Journal Artifact, vol 2, 2008 and his lecture: *Pragmatism Matters for Design*, Delft University, Netherlands, 2009) Anyway, *abduction* (abductive reasoning, appositional reasoning or retroductive reasoning), is not only a kind of reasoning, is the very essence of a knowledge theory: Pragmatism. (*Pragmaticism*, as Peirce named his philosophy) I have download your paper to read it with calm. Thank you. best regards ........................................... Alejandra Poblete P. COMUNICACIÓN VISUAL of: 223251239 móvil - whatsapp: +56996896490 2015-02-09 14:02 GMT-03:00 Charles Burnette <[log in to unmask]>: > Dear Colleagues, > > I have come to believe that an emphasis on correlation and abductive > thought are characteristic of design thinking, while causal reasoning is > used primarily to validate and implement what is expressed. Designers are > very good at identifying and adapting similarities often through analogies > and metaphors, editing out information that doesn’t suit their objectives. > > I don’t know if either correlation or abductive reasoning have been used > as systematic design or research methods. > Does anyone know of a well documented example of a systematic use of > correlation or abduction in design practice or research? > > I have recently published a paper "Re-cognizing* Components in A Theory of > Design Thinking” (www.independent.academia.edu/charlesburnette < > http://www.independent.academia.edu/charlesburnette>) that describes how > correlation was used heuristically to determine the seven modes of thought > in the theory. Once identified, the modes were correlated with profiles of > different subjects to demonstrate critical thinking, content analysis, > generation of new content, and instrumental application. > > I believe correlation can be an important tool in design research and > practice. But, I don’t believe it has yet been recognized as such. > I hope I’m wrong. > > Thanks for your help or critique. > > Chuck > > > > > > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> > Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design > Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------