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To cite this article: Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen & Francesco Bellucci (2014) New Light on Peirce's
Conceptions of Retroduction, Deduction, and Scientific Reasoning, International Studies in the
Philosophy of Science, 28:4, 353-373, DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2014.979667
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International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2014
Vol. 28, No. 4, 353 373, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2014.979667
We examine Charles S. Peirces mature views on the logic of science, especially as con-
tained in his later and still mostly unpublished writings (19071914). We focus on two
main issues. The first concerns Peirces late conception of retroduction. Peirce conceived
inquiry as performed in three stages, which correspond to three classes of inferences:
abduction or retroduction, deduction, and induction. The question of the logical form
of retroduction, of its logical justification, and of its methodology stands out as the
three major threads in his later writings. The other issue concerns the second stage of scien-
tific inquiry, deduction. According to Peirces later formulation, deduction is divided not
only into two kinds (corollarial and theorematic) but also into two sub-stages: logical
analysis and mathematical reasoning, where the latter is either corollarial or theorematic.
Save for the inductive stage, which we do not address here, these points cover the essentials
of Peirces latest thinking on the logic of science and reasoning.
1. Introduction
One century after Charles S. Peirces death (Milford, Penn., 19 April 1914), decisive
questions continue to arise in attempting to reconstruct his mature views on the
logic of science and on the nature of logical reasoning. It is well known that Peirce
explicated the logic of science by dividing scientific reasoning into three general
kinds: abduction (or retroduction), deduction, and induction. It is also well known
that these are, for the late Peirce, three stages of inquiry rather than different kinds
of inferences: first comes abduction, the process of forming an explanatory conjecture,
Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen is at the Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Tech-
nology, and the Centre for Epistemology and Cognitive Science, Xiamen University. Francesco Bellucci is at the
Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology. Correspondence to:
Ragnar Nurkse innovatsiooni ja valitsemise instituut, Tallinna Tehnikaulikool, Ehitajate tee 5, 19086 Tallinn,
Estonia. E-mail: ahti-veikko.pietarinen@ttu.ee, bellucci.francesco@gmail.com
19071908 Peirce came to think that any deduction whatever is actually preceded by
what he now calls logical analysis. Deduction is thereby divided into two sub-stages:
logical analysis and demonstration proper, in which the latter may be either corollarial
or theorematic. Further, the split of deduction into stages was accompanied by the par-
allel emergence in the same years of the idea of a theoric step, which for the late Peirce
is the peculiar theorematic element of theorematic reasoning.
The article is divided as follows. Section 2 concerns Peirces conception of retroduc-
tion, its justification (2.1) and its methodology (what Peirce called methodeutic, 2.2).
Section 3 deals with deduction and its sub-stages, logical analysis (3.1) and theore-
matic demonstration (3.2). Overall, save for the inductive stage, which we do not
address here, these points cover the essentials of what we take Peirce to have encom-
passed with his perennial integrated logic of science and reasoning.
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duties in full. There are several reasons for the schemas inadequacy, of which we
mention only one that has caused confusion in the earlier literature. The schema
may misleadingly suggest that abductive reasoning corresponds to the inference to
the best explanation (Harman 1965) or to one of its deflated versions (Lipton
2004). Retroductive processes have relatively little to do with inferences to the best
explanation, however, as has by now been acknowledged in the relevant literature
(see e.g. Hintikka 1998; Minnameier 2004; Paavola 2004; Tiercelin 2005; Campos
2011).
This matter is so important as to merit a specific further point. A feature of a
hypothesis or conjecture may well be that it should explain the facts. Peirce observes
that while in many cases the truth of the hypothesis retroductively inferred may be said
to explain the facts observed, yet what certainly happens in all cases of retroduction is
that
a knowledge that the retroductive hypothesis was actually true would suffice to cause
a knowledge that the original experience would be (or would probably be) such as
they actually were. It thus, at any rate, explains, if not the objective (or in my
language, the real) facts, at least how the knowledge of them would be produced
by a knowledge of the truth of the hypothesis. (MS 905, 1908)
It is not necessary that the hypothesis explain any actual fact. It suffices for Peirce that
the truth of the hypothesis would render the facts at least inferrable, that is, capable of
being known by reasoning. The explanatory role of retroduction is condensed in the
relation between the explaining conjectures and the explananda, which is a subjunctive
conditional: if in such circumstances the hypothesis were true, then the surprising fact
would follow therefrom deductively or syllogistically. The explanation that retroduc-
tion affords is in Peirces terms a syllogism exhibiting the surprising fact as necessarily
following from the circumstances of its occurrence together with the truth of the con-
jecture as premises (MS 843, 41, 1908). Such explaining syllogism is the inversion of
the 1903 formula:
If A were true, C would be observable.
A is true.
Therefore, C is observable.
International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 357
Moreover, one significant yet until now an entirely unknown formulation of the
schema of retroduction is found in one of Peirces unpublished draft letters to Victoria
Welby:
[The] interrogative mood does not mean the mere idle entertainment of an idea. It
means that it will be wise to go to some expense, dependent upon the advantage that
would accrue from knowing that Any/Some S is M, provided that expense would
render it safe to act on that assumption supposing it to be true. This is the kind
of reasoning called reasoning from consequent to antecedent. For it is related to
the Modus Tollens thus:
posed that abductive inferences aim at answering the inquirers questions put to some
definite source of information (cf. Tiercelin 2008).
According to Peirces late view, logic is concerned with retroduction in two senses.
On the one hand, logic has to provide a justification for retroductive reasoning. Peirce
divides the normative science of logic into three branches: speculative grammar, which
is the physiology of signs, critics, which examines the validity and relative strength of
reasonings, and methodeutic, which studies the principles of valuable research and
exposition (MS 478, 42, 1903). The justification of retroduction is the bottom ques-
tion of logical critic (EP 2, 443, 1908). On the other hand, once critic has justified ret-
roduction, it is up to methodeutic to teach how to reason retroductively in an effective
way. Abductions are for Peirce the only ones in which after they have been admitted to
be just, it still remains to inquire whether they are advantageous (MS L 75, 1902). The
following subsections deal with the critic and methodeutic of retroduction,
respectively.
If this were the whole story, however, the central question of logical critic would be
solved at once: the justification of abduction simply would be deductive. But the
last passage unmistakeably shows that Peirces position is more complex than it
usually has been taken to be.
In his early writings Peirce had claimed that the three leading principles of inference
are indemonstrable, namely that each of them so far as it can be proved must be
proved by means of that kind of inference of which it is the ground, or otherwise
the former kind of inference would be reduced to the latter (W 1, 280, 1865). The
principle of deduction has therefore to be proved deductively, the principle of induc-
tion inductively, and the principle of abduction abductively (W 1, 280 283). The truth
of each principle thus depends on the validity of the inference of which it is the leading
principle (W 1, 184185). One might object that grounding retroduction upon
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another retroduction would launch us into a vicious circle. But the threat of infinite
regress never preoccupied Peirce much. He even argued explicitly for a recursive struc-
ture of leading principles (W 1, 412415, 1866; CP 2.466, 1867; CP 3.166, 1880; MS
441, 1898; Bellucci 2013).
In A Theory of Probable Inference, published in Studies in Logic in 1883, Peirce
explained inductions and hypotheses to be inferences from the conclusion and one
premise of a statistical syllogism to the other premise (Peirce 1883, 147). The statistical
syllogism of which induction and abduction are the inversion is called explanatory syl-
logism. In order for an induction or hypothesis to have any validity, it is requisite that
the explanatory syllogism should be a valid statistical deduction (Peirce 1883, 148). It
is to this 1883 doctrine that Peirce would later refer in discussing the validity of induc-
tion and retroduction:
As for the other two types of inference Induction and Retroduction, I have shown
that they are nothing but apagogical transformations of deduction and that the
question of the value of any such reasoning is at once reduced to the question of
the accuracy of a Deduction. (MS 751, 4, 1898)
The validity of Induction consists in the fact it proceeds according to a method
which though it may give provisional results that are incorrect will yet if steadily
pursued, eventually correct any such error. The two propositions, that all Induction
possesses this kind of validity, and that no Induction possesses any other kind that is
more than a further determination of this kind, are both susceptible of demon-
stration by necessary reasoning. The demonstrations are given in my Johns
Hopkins paper. (MS 293, 1907)
Peirce considers the 1883 doctrine of the explanatory syllogism valid still in 1907. A
consequence of this is that, since all deduction is diagrammatic, retroduction, and
induction also depend on diagrammatic reasoning. The dependence of retroduction
on diagrammatic reasoning, either direct or indirect, is indeed a recurring theme in
Peirces later writings (see e.g. MS 293). It is dependent on transformations between
propositions that are not unlike those on which deduction depends. The difference
is that in retroductive transformations one has to deal with extended kinds of prop-
ositions (phemes), as only those can represent and capture what the essential charac-
ters of the meaning of questions is.
360 A.-V. Pietarinen and F. Bellucci
However, that the validity of induction ultimately rests on deductive reasoning does
not imply that induction becomes reduced to deduction, just as the possibility that ret-
roduction be justified also inductively and deductively does not reduce it to either of
them. On the contrary, Peirce affirms that each kind of reasoning is also justified by its
own means. The justification for induction, Peirce states, in general rests upon certain
inductions, and the justification of deduction in general rests upon certain deduc-
tions. From these two justifications he draws a conjecture that the justification of ret-
roduction must rest upon certain explanatory conjectures (MS 328, 46, c. 1905).
Let us turn to the retroductive justification of retroduction. Peirce recurrently
returned to this problem. He had concluded that man has an instinct for guessing cor-
rectly, inductively proved by the history of physics (MS 690692, 1901). But plain
instinct is problematic in that it does not possess a logical form and is not subject
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or lume naturale, especially as far as discoveries in physics are concerned (MS 873, 13
15, 1908). The validity of retroduction is, in part, grounded on experience. But the
argument from the history of science is just one of the justifications of retroduction:
the verdict of pure logic invoked in the preceding passage is that retroduction is valid
in so far as nature is explainable at all. No full answer to why retroduction ought to be
trusted can solely consist of experiential facts and inductive generalization on the basis
of them.
If we identify the rationale mentioned in the Harvard Lectures with the explana-
tory syllogism of 1883, then Peirces mature position may be recovered as follows.
There are three different kinds of reasoning irreducible to the others, each governed
by a specific leading principle. In the first place, induction and retroduction presuppose
the validity of deduction, because they are inversions of a statistical deduction. They
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esis to test, dependent upon the advantage that would accrue from knowing the truth
of the hypothesis. Peirces argument for the quality of economy for the rules of retro-
ductive reasoning is roughly the following. The logical validity of abduction presup-
poses that nature be in principle explainable. But this means that to discover is
simply to expedite an event that would sooner or later come to pass. For what is
real is that which the scientific community would in the long run discover. A good
scientist can anticipate what retroduction would produce as its answers by making
good experienced guesses and investigating how those guesses would fare in the face
of other possible guesses. Peirce accordingly maintained that the whole service of
logic to science, whatever the nature of its services to individuals may be, is of the
nature of an economy (MS 691, 93, 1901). Economy for Peirce depends on three
factors: cost (of money, time, energy, thought), the value of the thing proposed,
and its effects upon other projects (MS L 75, 1902; CP 7.164231, 1901). If a scientist
does not have such positive facts at hand that would make some hypotheses objectively
more probable than some others, then she should select the cheapest ones, which could
for instance mean real cash value or the cognitively or the computationally cheapest
ones.
There is one further, methodological aspect of retroduction that gains prominence
in Peirces later writings. In the Neglected Argument Peirce refers to Galileos maxim
that hypothesis should be as simple as possible. If this maxim is taken in the literal
sense that hypotheses should be logically simple, namely they should add the least
to what has been observed, then, he argued, the following objections apply: (i) there
is in principle no reason why a logically simple hypothesis should be true; (ii) follow-
ing this maxim to perfection would require that we content ourselves with the very
facts observed; (iii) the facts to be explained are often logically quite complicated;
and (iv) those determinations that seemed not to contribute to the explanation
have often turned out to be the most valuable parts of the theories (MS 843, 61
63; EP 2, 444). If on the contrary Galileos maxim is taken to mean that those hypoth-
eses are preferable which are more natural and facile for the human mind than
another which renders the facts equally intelligible (MS 905), then the maxim
becomes perfectly reasonable. For Peirce, the value of logical simplicity is badly sec-
ondary to that of simplicity in the other sense (EP 2, 444445).
International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 363
preceding stage that is powered by retroduction, of which deduction traces the necess-
ary consequences. The value of a hypothesis, whether about existing things or imagin-
ary objects, is in its practical, observable consequences, and in order to calculate these
consequences we must reason deductively. Deduction is possible only of a perfectly
ideal state of things and therefore only of a hypothesis as its premise.
What was the development of Peirces views on deduction? He had been working on
the algebra of logic since the late 1860s, but it is only in the mid-1880s that he grasps
how critical the idea that deduction is iconic is, and how that idea is then to gain pro-
minence in the overall logic of science. In 1878 he claimed that all deductions are alike
in character, and are merely the application of general rules to particular cases (CP
2.620). In 1883 he still conceived deduction in syllogistic terms as proceeding from
rule and case to result (Peirce 1883, 145). However, in the 1885 The Algebra of
Logic paper he advances for the first time the argument that deduction is iconic
and observational:
The truth, however, appears to be that all deductive reasoning, even simple syllo-
gism, involves an element of observation; namely, deduction consists in construct-
ing an icon or diagram the relations of whose parts shall present a complete analogy
with those of the parts of the object of reasoning, of experimenting upon this image
in the imagination, and of observing the results so as to discover unnoticed and
hidden relations among the parts. (Peirce 1885, 182)
All deductive reasoning is constructive or diagrammatic, even syllogism. In fact,
nothing can be deduced syllogistically from the premises unless we make the imagi-
native observation that the predicate of one premise is the subject of the other (MS
398, 2, 1893). But in syllogism such perceptual element is easily overlooked due to
the rudimentary nature of its illative process. Peirces logic of relatives, by contrast,
makes the observational element evident. The algebra of logic becomes grounded
upon icons (the axioms and rules) and the whole algebraic procedure is in this
sense iconic.
In July 1902, Peirce applied to the Carnegie Institution for financial support in
bringing his works on logic to completion. The application contained the plan for a
set of 36 Memoirs, or chapters, each devoted to a single topic, and the whole was
to present a theory of scientific reasoning (MS L 75, 29). The application, infamously
364 A.-V. Pietarinen and F. Bellucci
rejected, meant that the logic was never completed (Brent 1998, 278 290). The fourth
memoir, entitled Analysis of the Methods of Mathematical Demonstration, opened
with the affirmation that his first real discovery about mathematical procedure was
that there are two kinds of necessary reasoning, the corollarial and the theorematic
(MS L 75, 95). These he explained as follows:
Corollarial deduction is where it is only necessary to imagine any case in which the
premisses are true in order to perceive immediately that the conclusion holds in that
case. . . . Theorematic deduction is deduction in which it is necessary to experiment
in the imagination upon the image of the premiss in order from the result of such
experiment to make corollarial deductions to the truth of the conclusion. (MS L 75,
NEM 4, 38)
In corollarial reasoning, the diagram of the premises already represents the conclusion,
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while in theorematic reasoning the diagram of the premises must be modified and
experimented upon in order that it might represent the conclusion. Once the manipu-
lation of the diagram is performed, the conclusion follows in a corollarial fashion.
It may be thought that the doctrine of theorematic and corollarial deduction, which
was a relatively late product of Peirces logical investigation, underwent no substantial
modification after its first formulation (MS 339, MS 692, 1901; MS L 75, 1902). It is
indeed true that Peirce would continue to refer to this distinction in roughly the same
terms in the following years. We see him explaining the distinction in a letter to
William James in December 1909 (NEM 3, 869870), for example. However, by
spring 1908 he had come to the conclusion that deduction is actually preceded by
logical analysis (MS 842, 43, 1908). In Peirces final formulations of this position
deduction is divided, first, into two sub-stages, logical analysis (also termed explica-
tion) and deduction proper (also termed mathematical reasoning or demonstration).
Second, the latter sub-stage is either corollarial or theorematic.
The evolution of his thoughts on this matter is evinced in the successive drafts of his
Neglected Argument paper. In the first version, MS 842, Peirce introduces the idea of
two different sub-stages of deduction, the logistic and the syllogical stage:
There are two kinds of deduction, for which no better designations have occurred to
me than the logistic and the syllogical substages of deduction, or definitory and
ratiocinative deduction. The former includes the analysis of concepts, the acqui-
sition of distinct ideas, and the transformation of them into fruitful forms. (MS
842, 35)
In a parallel passage of the same text, these sub-stages are termed branches: the div-
ision of Deduction into the two branches of Logical Analysis which clears up defi-
nitions and Demonstration which invents apodictic proofs (MS 842, 43). In the
second draft of the article, MS 843, these parts, sub-stages, or branches of deduction
are called explication and demonstration:
Deduction has two parts. For the first step must be to Explicate the hypothesis, i.e. to
render it perfectly distinct. This process of Explication or Logical Analysis is an
Argument, since it elicits truth; although it does not rest on distinctly formulated
premises. . . . To describe the process is not my intention: it closely resembles the
second part of Deduction, which is Demonstration. (MS 843, 44)
International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 365
Yet in another draft, included in MS 905, Peirce puts the pieces together. Deduction is
in fact performed in two stages, the first of logical analysis and the second of math-
ematical deduction properly. It is this second stage that can be either theorematic or
corollarial:
And thus the whole stage of Deduction consists of two sub-stages, the first of logical
analysis and the second of mathematical reasoning, which I take to include syllogistic
reasoning. I may add that the second is again divisible into what I call corollarial and
theorematic reasoning, of which the latter requires the invention of a new icon, or ima-
ginary object diagram, while the former proceeds directly by syllogisms, results of pre-
vious logical analyses and mathematically reasoned conclusions. (MS 905)
This is the division of deduction that eventually goes in the published version of the
Neglected Argument:
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Deduction has two parts. For its first step must be, by logical analysis, to Explicate
the hypothesis. . . . Explication is followed by Demonstration, or Deductive Argu-
mentation. . . . demonstration should be Corollarial when it can . . . while Theore-
matic Demonstration resorts to more complicated processes of thought. (EP 2,
441 442)
The metamorphosis of deduction in the drafts of the Neglected Argument is due, we
believe, to the increasing importance that Peirce accorded to logical analysis in his later
years. Logical analysis was becoming for him such an integral part of deduction that he
thought it better to consider the former as the first stage of the latter.
distinction. Peirce notoriously contrasted mathematics and formal logic as the science
that draws necessary conclusions and the science of drawing necessary conclusion,
respectively (CP 4.239). In a sense, logic depends on mathematics because mathemat-
ics is the emporium of deduction (MS 328). But Levy showed how for Peirce the
mathematician may avail herself of the aid of logical analysis and thus of logic. For
example, the principal problem of the doctrine of multitude (set theory) is to form
a definition of a collection, a problem that Peirce considered to be a logical one
(NEM 3, 1070). When Peirce wrote to Cantor in 1900 he acknowledged him precisely
for his accomplishments on being able to frame those exact hypotheses by the analysis
of unclear notions, which made Cantor in Peirces estimate a logician of our school of
Exact Logic (NEM 3, 769). This is a consequence of the 1895 amendment of Benja-
mins definition (the framing of hypothesis becomes part of mathematics), later
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reflected in the 1908 development documented above (logical analysis becomes the
first stage of all deduction).
Peirce came to see a strict connection between logical analysis and that kind of
abstraction that he called hypostatic. That a collection is a hypostatic abstraction is
revealed as soon as the notion of collection is properly defined: Peirce took a collection
to be a substance whose existence consists in the existence of certain other things
called its members (NEM 4, 164, 1903). Hypostatic abstraction is the operation of
turning the predicate of a proposition into the subject position. By hypostatic abstrac-
tion we convert or analyse (1) Socrates is wise into (2) Socrates possesses wisdom.
Hypostatic abstraction is a necessary inference whose conclusion refers to a subject
not referred to by the premiss (CP 4.463, 1903). (1) does not mention wisdom;
yet the derivation of (2) from (1) is a necessary one.
In one of the most crucial drafts of the Neglected Argument, logical analysis is said
to be irreducible to ordinary (syllogistic or corollarial) reasoning:
But this second stage of inquiry which I call Deduction, very commonly involves a
process of logical analysis which, as far as I see, cannot be reduced to the ordinary
necessary reasoning. . . . By the aid of logical analysis . . . we convert B is heavy into
B has weight. No doubt by introducing suitable definitions as premisses the same
result can be reached syllogistically; but that is only because logical analysis has
aided in the formation of those definitions. (MS 905)
What is striking about this passage is that as an example of logical analysis Peirce pre-
sents a clear case of what he in other places calls hypostatic abstraction. The argument
is that the logical analysis of the proposition B is heavy as B has weight introduces an
element that cannot be obtained by corollarial deductive reasoning alone. That analy-
sis is not merely a superficial modification of the form of expression. In hypostatic
abstraction, a modification in the form of expression is actually a passing from one
thought to another, new thought, that is, is of the nature of an inference. If it were
objected that by means of appropriate definitions the latter proposition could be syl-
logistically derived from the former, Peirces reply would have been that even in that
case logical analysis has been used to get at those very definitions, because definition
is logical analysis of a general predicate. His point in this passage is that in reasoning,
logical analysis introduces certain abstractions that no mere corollarial reasoning could
368 A.-V. Pietarinen and F. Bellucci
introduce. This observation leads us to the aforementioned distinction in the second
sub-stage of deduction, that between the two kinds of demonstrations, the theore-
matic and the corollarial.
The theorematic procedure, whose characterizing element is the theoric step or theoric
reasoning, is taken to be very plainly allied to retroduction. Hoffmann sees this as a
problematic assertion in that being like abduction is not the same thing as being
abduction (Hoffmann 2010, 571). But Peirce explains that the two are alike only in
creating new ideas and differing in what the nature of those ideas is and what the
security of the proceeding is. In abduction, new ideas come in the form of scientific
hypotheses. In theoric steps, they have to do with conceptual changes in the very
notions involved. He in fact suggests that theoric steps are in many cases non-demon-
strative while not falling short of yielding necessary conclusions: every theorem of any
particular prepotency,every one not almost nauseously childish,is really not
demonstrative (MS 334, 6); those major propositions, which alone, as it seems to
me, merit the high-sounding title of theorems, never do follow necessarily from
their alleged premises (MS 683, 5). There is an echo here of the treatment of
logical analysis discussed above: just as logical analysis is not purely corollarial, so the-
orematic reasoning is not purely demonstrative.
In the Neglected Argument the retroductive character of the theoric step clearly
emerges. Peirces example concerns Euclids 16th proposition, which states that in
any triangle, if one of the sides is produced, then the exterior angle is greater than
either of the interior and opposite angles. Here the peculiar theoric step involved is
the hypothesis retroductively inferred that the triangle in question essentially rep-
resents every possible plane triangle; so that what is observed to be the case in his
figure, will be true of every triangle (MS 905). But this supposition, Peirce argues,
holds only in the infinite space of Euclidean geometry, while it does not hold in elliptic
geometry. The supposition is nonetheless indispensable, and consequently the
theorem cannot be said to having been derived from the premises in a purely demon-
strative manner. As he had observed much earlier, the space in which Euclids 16th
proposition holds is merely an ideal space,a hypothetical space,of which we
know this true, because we choose to make our hypothesis so (MS 590, 3, 1892).
He later expresses the same idea by stating that here a theoric step has been introduced
which is retroductive. Since all great hypotheses of mathematics come to us through
retroduction (MS 754, 7, 1907), the theoric step that distinguishes theorematic
370 A.-V. Pietarinen and F. Bellucci
from corollarial reasoning may be considered as the retroductive element of
deduction.
Our conclusion is also confirmed by a further consideration, which seems to have
been overlooked by commentators. In the Amazing Mazes of 1908, after having pre-
sented his definition of theoric step reported above, Peirce writes:
I wish a historical study were made of all the remarkable theoric steps and noticeable
classes of theoric steps. I do not mean a mere narrative, but a critical examination of
just what and of what mode the logical efficacy of the different steps has been. Then,
upon this work as a foundation, should be erected a logical classification of theoric
steps; and this should be crowned with a new methodeutic of necessary reasoning.
(CP 4.615)
In order to study and classify the different varieties of theoric step one cannot proceed
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completely a priori. Just as Peirce believed that reasoning should not be studied as
something that happens within the mind but as something embodied in external
signs, so he was confident that the proper way to study deductive reasoning is to
look at the history of mathematics. The desired logical classification of the different
methods of mathematical demonstration should be based on a historico-critical exam-
ination of the remarkable theoric steps in the history of mathematics, which is the
emporium of deduction.
Such research (historical and classificatory) is part of a methodeutic of necessary
reasoning. The reason of the necessity of methodeutic is that the theoric steps, and
a fortiori theorematic reasoning, contain retroductive elements. Just as retroductive
reasoning has maxims and rules (methodeutical or strategic rules), so theorematic
reasoning with its retroductive elements needs to be complemented by a methodeutic
of deduction. The immense variety, Peirce writes, of those systematic devices by
which mathematicians do their experiments is so vast that nobody has ever pre-
tended to draw up a complete classification of them (MS 617, 1112, c. 1906). He
was unable to carry out the project of such classification, however, and held the
task to pertain to that department of logic that still awaits a master (MS 617, 1112).
4. Conclusion
Peirces later theory of retroduction explored a variety of logical forms of retroduction.
His completed theory of the validity of retroduction, still in 1908 considered the
bottom question of logical critic, involves deductive, inductive, and retroductive jus-
tification. The maxims of retroduction, so important in the methodology of retroduc-
tion, concern the experientiality, economy, and Peircean Galilean simplicity of
hypotheses. The second stage of inquiry, deduction, divides into two stages: logical
analysis and demonstration. All deduction, no matter how simple, begins with the
logical analysis of hypothetical states of things. All propositions directly inferred in
this stage are corollaries and the reasoning is corollarial. On the other hand, all prop-
ositions inferred by means of an invention or theoric step, abstractional or not, are
theorems, and such reasoning is theorematic. Peirce proposed, remarkably, that
these special moments of necessary reasoning are retroductive, not deductive.
International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 371
Acknowledgements
Research supported by the Estonian Research Council, Project PUT267, Diagrammatic
Mind: Logical and Communicative Aspects of Iconicity, Principal Investigator Ahti-
Veikko Pietarinen. We have presented parts of this paper at the following conferences:
Philosophy of Science in the 21st CenturyChallenges and Tasks, Lisbon, 46
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