28

G29

proper place. Another question to be noted for further later consideration
is whether this first step in inquiry can conclude, if it can be
called "concluding," otherwise than in the interrogative mood, if
grammarians will acknowledge such a mood.
Certain it is that if a series of experiences does no more than suggest an idea interrogatively, the mere occurrence
of the suggestion warrants us in regarding the movement of thought as having the essential character of this
first stage of inquiry.
I call this mode of
inference, or, if you please, this step toward inference, by in which an
explanatory hypothesis is first suggested, by the name of
retroduction, since it pro regresses from a consequent to a
hypothetical antecedent.
But while this explains why I have selected the vocable 'retroduction'
to express my meaning, I claim the right, as inventor of the
term, to make its definition to be, The passage of thought from
experiencing something, E, to predicating a concept of the mind's
creating; the subject of the predication being a specified class
to which E belongs, or an indefinite part of such class.

The second stage of inquiry consists in deducing the consequences

G29

proper place. Another question to be noted for further later consideration
is whether this first step in inquiry can conclude, if it can be
called "concluding," otherwise than in the interrogative mood, if
grammarians will acknowledge such a mood.
Certain it is that if a series of experiences does no more than suggest an idea interrogatively, the mere occurrence
of the suggestion warrants us in regarding the movement of thought as having the essential character of this
first stage of inquiry.
I call this mode of
inference, or, if you please, this step toward inference, by in which an
explanatory hypothesis is first suggested, by the name of
retroduction, since it pro regresses from a consequent to a
hypothetical antecedent. But while this explains why I have selected the vocable 'retroduction'
to express my meaning, I claim the right, as inventor of the
term, to make its definition to be, The passage of thought from
experiencing something, E, to predicating a concept of the mind's
creating; the subject of the predication being a specified class
to which E belongs, or an indefinite part of such class.

The second stage of inquiry consists in deducing the consequences