Editing Abductive reasoning (section)

===Abductive validation===
Abductive validation is the process of validating a given hypothesis through abductive reasoning. This can also be called reasoning through successive approximation.{{Citation needed|date=July 2020}} Under this principle, an explanation is valid if it is the best possible explanation of a set of known data. The best possible explanation is often defined in terms of simplicity and elegance (see [[Occam's razor]]). Abductive validation is common practice in hypothesis formation in [[science]]; moreover, Peirce claims that it is a ubiquitous aspect of thought:

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Looking out my window this lovely spring morning, I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I don't see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image, which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete. I perform an abduction when I so much as express in a sentence anything I see. The truth is that the whole fabric of our knowledge is one matted felt of pure hypothesis confirmed and refined by induction. Not the smallest advance can be made in knowledge beyond the stage of vacant staring, without making an abduction at every step.<ref>Peirce MS. 692, quoted in Sebeok, T. (1981) "[http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/b_resources/abduction.html You Know My Method]" in Sebeok, T., ''The Play of Musement'', Bloomington, IA: Indiana, page 24.</ref>
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It was Peirce's own maxim that "Facts cannot be explained by a hypothesis more extraordinary than these facts themselves; and of various hypotheses the least extraordinary must be adopted."<ref>Peirce MS. 696, quoted in Sebeok, T. (1981) "[http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/b_resources/abduction.html You Know My Method]" in Sebeok, T., ''The Play of Musement'', Bloomington, IA: Indiana, page 31.</ref> After obtaining possible hypotheses that may explain the facts, abductive validation is a method for identifying the most likely hypothesis that should be adopted.