TY - JOUR
T1 - Abstraction and Generalization in the Logic of Science
T2 - Cases from Nineteenth-Century Scientific Practice
AU - Cristalli, Claudia
AU - Pietarinen, Ahti Veikko
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Estonian Research Council personal research grant PUT 1305, Abduction in the Age of Fundamental Uncertainty (Pietarinen, 2016–18), and by the HSE University Basic Research Program, funded by the Russian Academic Excellence Project 5–100 (Pietarinen, 2018– 20). An earlier version of a part of this article was presented at the HOPOS conference in Groningen, 2018. Our thanks go to the Peirce Edition Project for permission to consult their Peirce archives and reproduce the images, the Harvard Houghton Library for the Peirce manuscript material, and the Galton Collection at University College London and its digital repository at the Wellcome Library, London. Finally, we wish to thank the HOPOS reviewers for their helpful suggestions and constructive criticism of the article and the editor, Lydia Patton, for her patience and support while we were sourcing the images.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/3
Y1 - 2021/3
N2 - Abstraction and generalization are two processes of reasoning that have a special role in the construction of scientific theories and models. They have been important parts of the scientific method ever since the nineteenth century. A philosophical and historical analysis of scientific practices shows how abstraction and generalization found their way into the theory of the logic of science of the nineteenth-century philosopher Charles S. Peirce. Our case studies include the scientific practices of Francis Galton and John Herschel, who introduced composite photographs and graphical methods, respectively, as technologies of generalization and thereby influenced Peirce’s logic of abstraction. Herschel’s account of generalization is further supported by William Whewell, who was very influential on Peirce. By connecting Herschel’s scientific technology of abstraction to Peirce’s logical technology of abstraction—namely, diagrams—we highlight the role of judgments in scientific observation by hypostatic abstractions. We also relate Herschel’s discovery-driven logic of science and Peirce’s open-ended diagrammatic logic to the use of models in science. Ultimately, Peirce’s theory of abstraction is a case of showing how logic applies to reality.
AB - Abstraction and generalization are two processes of reasoning that have a special role in the construction of scientific theories and models. They have been important parts of the scientific method ever since the nineteenth century. A philosophical and historical analysis of scientific practices shows how abstraction and generalization found their way into the theory of the logic of science of the nineteenth-century philosopher Charles S. Peirce. Our case studies include the scientific practices of Francis Galton and John Herschel, who introduced composite photographs and graphical methods, respectively, as technologies of generalization and thereby influenced Peirce’s logic of abstraction. Herschel’s account of generalization is further supported by William Whewell, who was very influential on Peirce. By connecting Herschel’s scientific technology of abstraction to Peirce’s logical technology of abstraction—namely, diagrams—we highlight the role of judgments in scientific observation by hypostatic abstractions. We also relate Herschel’s discovery-driven logic of science and Peirce’s open-ended diagrammatic logic to the use of models in science. Ultimately, Peirce’s theory of abstraction is a case of showing how logic applies to reality.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106750921&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1086/713087
DO - 10.1086/713087
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85106750921
SN - 2152-5188
VL - 11
SP - 93
EP - 121
JO - HOPOS
JF - HOPOS
IS - 1
ER -