Abstract
Peirce proposed the concept of abductive inference to inquire into the generation of new hypotheses and defined it as another term for pragmatism, no less (Admitting, then, that the question of Pragmatism is the question of Abduction, let us consider it under that form. What is good abduction? What should an explanatory hypothesis be to be worthy to rank as a hypothesis? Of course, it must explain the facts. But what other conditions ought it to fulfill to be good? The question of the goodness of anything is whether that thing fulfills its end. What, then, is the end of an explanatory hypothesis? Its end is, through subjection to the test of experiment, to lead to the avoidance of all surprise and to the establishment of a habit of positive expectation that shall not be disappointed (Peirce. 1931–1966. The collected papers of Charles S. Peirce, 8 vols., C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss & A. W. Burks (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 5.197)). Apart from being linked to the vague idea of the play of musement as an almost dreamlike process of epiphany or inspiration or as an inverted minor premise from a syllogism, we are far from understanding the dynamics and specificity of this kind of inference. Among authors dealing with this problem I could trace three factors at work in processes of abduction, i.e. combination, resemblance, and dialetics or questioning. In this paper I attempt to look a bit further into this enigma by a category of play I defined as “peripatos” or games of invention, riddles, and puzzles, hoping it could shed some light on the process of creativity in several social activities such as science, art, war, and religion. The approach will take on Huizinga’s idea of the play of culture, Lakoff and Johnson’s conception of cross-domain correlations, Kant’s view of “aesthetic ideas,” and my proposal of the play of peripatos through a “what if-as if” coupling into this very common yet little understood, and thus mystified, process of the generation of innovative ideas.
References
Berleant, Arnold. 1993. Art and engagement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Burghardt, Gordon M. 1998. The evolutionary origins of play revisited: Lessons from turtles. In Marc Bekoff & John Alexander Byers (eds.), Animal play: Evolutionary, comparative, and ecological perspectives, 1–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511608575.002Search in Google Scholar
Burke, Edmund. 1756. On the sublime and beautiful. Adelaide: University of Adelaide eBooks@Adelaide.Search in Google Scholar
Caillois, Roger. 1994. Los juegos y los hombres; La máscara y el vértigo. México D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica.Search in Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1882. Descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, 2nd edn. London: John Murray.10.5962/bhl.title.107131Search in Google Scholar
Frazer, Sir & James George. 1922. The golden bough. New York: Macmillan.10.1007/978-1-349-00400-3Search in Google Scholar
Griffths, Hugh. 2015. The D-Day deception operations TAXABLE and GLIMMER. IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine 30(3). 12–20.10.1109/MAES.2014.140193Search in Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Michael. 1999. Problems with Peirce’s concept of abduction. Foundations of Science 4(3). 271–305.10.1023/A:1009675824079Search in Google Scholar
Huizinga, Johan. 1949. Homo ludens: A study of the play-element in culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Search in Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund. 1990 [1948]. Experience and judgment: Investigations in a genealogy of logic, J. S. Churchill and K. Ameriks. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1969 [1790]. The critique of judgement, James Creed Meredith (trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kedrov, B. M. 1957. On the question of the psychology of scientific creativity (on the occasion of the discovery by D. I. Mendeleev of the periodic law). Soviet Psychology 2. 18–37.10.2753/RPO1061-0405050218Search in Google Scholar
Koestler, Arthur. 1976. The act of creation. London: Hutchinson.Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Mandoki, Katya. 2007. Everyday aesthetics: Prosaics, the play of culture and social identities. Aldershot: Ashgate.Search in Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles S. 1931–1966. The collected papers of Charles S. Peirce, 8 vols., C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss & A. W. Burks (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [Reference to Peirce’s papers will be designated CP followed by volume and paragraph number.].Search in Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles S. 1967. Manuscripts in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, as identified by Richard Robin. Annotated catalogue of the papers of Charles S. Peirce. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. [Reference to Peirce’s manuscripts will be designated MS or L.].Search in Google Scholar
Petrilli, Susan. 2005. The semiotic universe of abduction. Semiotica 153(1/4). 23–51.10.1515/semi.2005.2005.153-1-4.23Search in Google Scholar
Schiller, Friederich von. 1795. Letters upon the aesthetic education of man. http://public-library.uk/ebooks/55/76.pdf (accessed 25 May 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Sebeok, Thomas A. 1981. The play of musement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Welby, Victoria. 1983 [1903]. What is meaning? Studies in the development of significance (Foundations of Semiotics 2). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/fos.2Search in Google Scholar
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
