Charles Sanders Peirce and the Abduction of Einstein: On the Comprehensibility of the World

TL;DR

This paper applies Charles Peirce's logic of abduction to explain how physical laws are discovered, addressing Einstein's puzzle about the universe's comprehensibility and highlighting abduction's role in scientific reasoning.

Contribution

It demonstrates that Peirce's abductive reasoning can elucidate the process of deriving physical laws, offering a new perspective on scientific discovery and Einstein's philosophical questions.

Findings

Abduction explains the discovery of physical laws.

Peirce's logic clarifies Einstein's puzzle about comprehensibility.

Abduction can lead us astray despite its explanatory power.

Abstract

Einstein was deeply puzzled by the success of natural science, and thought that we would never be able to explain it. He came to this conclusion on the ground that we cannot extract the basic laws of physics from experience using induction or deduction, and he took this to mean that they cannot be arrived at in a logical manner at all. In this paper I use Charles Peirce's logic of abduction, a third mode of reasoning different from deduction and induction, and show that it can be used to explain how laws in physics are arrived at, thereby addressing Einstein's puzzle about the incomprehensible comprehensibility of the universe. Interpreting Einstein's reflections in terms of Peirce's abduction also sheds light on abduction itself, by seeing it applied in an area where our common sense, and with that our intuitions, give us little or no guidance, and is even prone to lead us astray.