Rodrigo Medel

One of the most significant advances to Peirce’s original idea of abduction is the one developed by Hintikka. Unlike the Peircean definition that is constructed from a syllogistic structure with low logical power, Hintikka releases abduction from the constraints of deduction by placing the concept in a more flexible interrogative framework where the reseacher advances to the final discovery through a strategic pathway. Paavola implemented this idea by using the discovery of the theory of evolution as historical example. In this work I posit that the example used by Paavola is incorrect because of a misinterpretation of Darwin’s discoveries. A more detailed inspection of Darwin’s Notebooks, however, reveals that Darwin’s reasoning in the search for the Principle of Divergence, the last hypothesis before the publication of the Origin of Species, is consistent with Hintikka proposition, albeit in a different historical segment than the used by Paavola.