Idealization, Abduction, and Progressive Scientific Change

Abstract

After a brief comparison of Aliseda’s account with different approaches to abductive reasoning, I try to relate abduction, understood in terms like those of Aliseda, to another concept which also occupies a very important role in scientific change: idealization. In particular, I try to reveal some interesting aspects related to notions like approximation and empirical progress.

Keywords

• abduction, non-monotonic reasoning, idealization, approximation, Kepler-Newton case, empirical progress, scientific change