ABSTRACT
Abduction Widely understood as inference to the best explanation, abduction may be conceived of even more generously as a form of backwardschaining reasoning, with or without explanatory force as the case may be. Adumbrated in remarks of Aristotle (Prior Analytics 2, 69a 20-36), today’s notion of abduction is more commonly associated with the American pragmatist, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who schematized it as follows:
The surprising fact C is observed. But if A were true, C would be a matter of course. Hence there is reason to suspect that A is true.
