Creative Rationality: towards an Abductive Model of Scientific Change.

I argue for an abductive model of inference that embraces personal, cognitive processes and the social processes in which new conceptual schemes are negotiated and established, by showing that an abductive schema can be applied to patterns of inference ranging from perceptual inferences involved in the creation of new interpretative concepts to the construc­ tion of inclusive conceptual schemes. The advantages of the abductive scheme is that it shows where a novel insight or interpretation fits into a larger framework of mental, physical and social activity. It allows us to provide a rationale that links discovery to inductive and deductive patterns of inference without restricting our accounts to a particular logical fann. 1. Is there a logic of scientific discovery? Discovery implies the disclosure or the introduction of something new: a new molecular structure, say, or a new planet. It can also imply a substantial change in point of view: a gestalt-switch or a paradigln shift. To say that a process is scientific usually connotes some systematic if not logical prQcedure. But logics are incompatible with innovation. Years of research in artificial intelligence seem to confirm the paradox that Meno set Socrates in Plato's Meno. Plato defends Socrates' thesis that all knowledge is recollection by means of a thought experiment in which Socrates responds to a dilemma about inquiry. Someone posing a question either knows the answer (so would have no need to ask) or has no knowl­ edge of the answer (so would not be able to recognize the answer). The questioning is therefore pointless. Meno's uneducated slave boy is asked to construct a square double the size of a given square. In response to