A Pragmatic Perspective of Logic of Discovery and Creativity

Abstract

In this paper we intend to articulate the Peircean concept of abductive reasoning to the dynamics of the Logic of Discovery and creativity. For that, we firstly aim at reconstructing the concept of abduction. In accordance with Peirce (CP 2.96), abductive reasoning is one sort of inference that brings new elements to argumentation, which can be potentially taken as reasonable or a provisory valid conclusion, as those adopted in the Logic of Discovery. In this sense, the mental creative action in principle develops in the connections of judgments conducted by means of the insertion of new ideas that was not related within the cognitive agent’s conceptual net. This kind of mental action, when organized in accordance with abduction, pushes the developments of processes which involve the logic of discovery and creation. In accordance with Peirce (CP 1.383), there is an interior compulsion that leads us to gather ideas from our perspectives of time and space, regarding the interest of gaining intelligibility by means of meaning constructions formed in the ideas connections we established in our mind. In this context, the works of the artist or the scientist are not very different. “The work of the poet or novelist is not so utterly different from that of the scientific man” (CP 1.383). To elucidate such utterance we show some examples in science and art, on which abductive reasoning is manifest.