C.S. Peirce characterized inquiry in general not as the pursuit of truth per se but as the struggle to move from irritating, inhibitory doubts born of surprises, disagreements, and the like, and to reach a secure belief, belief being that on which one is prepared to act. He framed scientific inquiry as part of a broader spectrum and as spurred, like inquiry gener- ally, by actual doubt, not mere verbal or hyperbolic doubt, which he held to be fruitless. He outlined four methods of settling opinion, or- dered from least to most successful:

The method of tenacity – which brings comforts and decisiveness but leads to trying to ignore contrary information and others' views as if truth were intrinsically private, not public. It goes against the social im- pulse and easily falters since one may well notice when another's opin-

ion is as good as one's own initial opinion. Its successes can shine but tend to be transitory.

The method of authority – which overcomes disagreements but sometimes brutally. Its successes can be majestic and long-lived, but it cannot operate thoroughly enough to suppress doubts indefinitely, espe- cially when people learn of other societies present and past.

The method of the a priori – which promotes conformity less brutally but fosters opinions as something like tastes, arising in conversation and comparisons of perspectives in terms of what is agreeable to reason. Thereby it depends on fashion in paradigms and goes in circles over time. It is more intellectual and respectable but, like the first two meth- ods, sustains accidental and capricious beliefs, destining some minds to doubt it. The scientific method – the method wherein inquiry regards itself as fallible and purposely tests itself and criticizes, corrects, and improves itself.

Peirce held that slow, stumbling ratiocination can be dangerously in- ferior to instinct and traditional sentiment in practical matters, and that the scientific method is best suited to theoretical research, which in turn should not be trammeled by the other methods and practical ends; rea- son's "first rule" is that, in order to learn, one must desire to learn and, as a corollary, must not block the way of inquiry. The scientific method excels the others by being deliberately designed to arrive – eventually – at the most secure beliefs, upon which the most successful practices can be based. Starting from the idea that people seek not truth per se but in- stead to subdue irritating, inhibitory doubt, Peirce showed how, through the struggle, some can come to submit to truth for the sake of belief's integrity, seek as truth the guidance of potential practice correctly to its given goal, and wed themselves to the scientific method.

For Peirce, rational inquiry implies presuppositions about truth and the real; to reason is to presuppose , as a principle of the reasoner's self- regulation, that the real is discoverable and independent of our vagaries of opinion. In that vein he defined truth as the correspondence of a sign to its object and, pragmatically, not as actual consensus of some defi- nite, finite community, but instead as that final opinion which all inves- tigators would reach sooner or later but still inevitably, if they were to push investigation far enough, even when they start from different points.

In tandem he defined the real as a true sign's object, which is what it is independently of any finite community's opinion and, pragmatically,

depends only on the final opinion destined in a sufficient investigation. His theory of inquiry boils down to "Do the science." Those conceptions of truth and the real involve the idea of a community both without defi- nite limits and capable of definite increase of knowledge. As inference, logic is rooted in the social principle" since it depends on a standpoint that is, in a sense, unlimited.

Paying special attention to the generation of explanations, Peirce out- lined the scientific method as a coordination of three kinds of inference in a purposeful cycle aimed at settling doubts, as follows:

Abduction Guessing, inference to explanatory hypotheses for selec- tion of those best worth trying. From abduction, Peirce distinguishes induction as inferring, on the basis of tests, the proportion of truth in the hypothesis. Every inquiry, whether into ideas, brute facts, or norms and laws, arises from surprising observations in one or more of those realms. All explanatory content of theories comes from abduction, which guess- es a new or outside idea so as to account in a simple, economical way for a surprising or complicative phenomenon. Oftenest, even a well- prepared mind guesses wrong. But the modicum of success of our guesses far exceeds that of sheer luck and seems born of attunement to nature by instincts developed or inherent, especially insofar as best guesses are optimally plausible and simple in the sense, said Peirce, of the facile and natural, as by Galileo's natural light of reason and as dis- tinct from logical simplicity. Abduction is the most fertile but least se- cure mode of inference.

Its general rationale is inductive: it succeeds often enough and, with- out it, there is no hope of sufficiently expediting inquiry toward new truths. Coordinative method leads from abducing a plausible hypothesis to judging it for its testability and for how its trial would economize in- quiry itself. Pragmatism is a method of reducing conceptual confusions fruitfully by equating the meaning of any conception with the conceiva- ble practical implications of its object's conceived effects – a method of experimentational mental reflection hospitable to forming hypotheses and conducive to testing them. It favors efficiency.

The hypothesis, being insecure, needs to have practical implications leading at least to mental tests and, in science, lending themselves to scientific tests. A simple but unlikely guess, if uncostly to test for falsi- ty, may belong first in line for testing. A guess is intrinsically worth testing if it has instinctive plausibility or reasoned objective probability, while subjective likelihood, though reasoned, can be misleadingly se-

ductive. Guesses can be chosen for trial strategically, for their caution, breadth, and incomplexity. One can hope to discover only that which time would reveal through a learner's sufficient experience anyway, so the point is to expedite it; the economy of research is what demands the leap, so to speak, of abduction and governs its art.