Darwin’s Ideas as Epitomes of Abductive Reasoning in the Teaching of School Scientific Explanation and Argumentation

Abstract

In this chapter, it is proposed that science teachers can foster students’ construction of model-based scientific explanations and argumentations through the intentional use of abductive reasoning. This kind of reasoning could be introduced in the science curriculum as a central “mode of thinking” when discussing the scientific methodology. School scientific argumentation is here understood as an “explanation of a scientific explanation,” where the connection between a natural phenomenon under scrutiny and a theoretical model (semantically conceived) to account for it is made explicit. It is contended that, in many cases of acknowledged relevance for school science, the “ascent” from evidence to model can be characterized as abduction (either in a broad or in a narrow sense). Accordingly, a suggestion is here advanced to teach the specific mechanics of the participation of abductive inferences in explanation and argumentation in (mainly secondary or tertiary) science classes through the use of paradigmatic cases (“epitomes”) taken from the history of science. Along this line, selected excerpts from Charles Darwin´s book, On the Origin of Species, (Darwin (1859) On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, 1st edn. John Murray, London), are employed as such epitomes for biology classes. Following the proposals of several authors, it is shown how a number of theoretical propositions contained in that book can be reconstructed as the conclusions from pieces of abductive reasoning that in many cases use intermediary analogies. Together with the analysis of the examples, the possible formative value of such “abductive reconstructions” for science education is explicated.