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Scientific method

Insofar as clarification by pragmatic reflection suits explanatory hypotheses and fosters predictions and testing, pragmatism points beyond the usual duo of foundational alternatives: deduction from self-evident truths, or rationalism; and induction from experiential phenomena, or empiricism.

Based on his critique of three modes of argument and different from either foundationalism or coherentism, Peirce's approach seeks to justify claims by a three-phase dynamic of inquiry:

Thereby, Peirce devised an approach to inquiry far more solid than the flatter image of inductive generalization simpliciter, which is a mere re-labeling of phenomenological patterns. Peirce's pragmatism was the first time the scientific method was proposed as an epistemology for philosophical questions.

A theory that succeeds better than its rivals in predicting and controlling our world is said to be nearer the truth. This is an operational notion of truth used by scientists.

Peirce extracted the pragmatic model or theory of inquiry from its raw materials in classical logic and refined it in parallel with the early development of symbolic logic to address problems about the nature of scientific reasoning.

Abduction, deduction, and induction make incomplete sense in isolation from one another but comprise a cycle understandable as a whole insofar as they collaborate toward the common end of inquiry. In the pragmatic way of thinking about conceivable practical implications, every thing has a purpose, and, as possible, its purpose should first be denoted. Abduction hypothesizes an explanation for deduction to clarify into implications to be tested so that induction can evaluate the hypothesis, in the struggle to move from troublesome uncertainty to more secure belief. No matter how traditional and needful it is to study the modes of inference in abstraction from one another, the integrity of inquiry strongly limits the effective modularity of its principal components.

Peirce's outline of the scientific method in §III–IV of "A Neglected Argument" is summarized below (except as otherwise noted). There he also reviewed plausibility and inductive precision (issues of critique of arguments).