The Abduction of the Future

Between inventive thinking and speculative design

Abstract

Evolutionary history, writes Peirce, teaches us that the future influences the present: it conditions it, puts it into question, and places it in a state of planning. To be in evolution, as well as to feel part of a history, means to project oneself, to form an idea, a prefiguration, of what we could be in a future state, no matter how distant.

The logical form of every design and the inventive process is abduction, in particular projective abduction, which proposes as the object of discovery an object or event that has yet to be realized. In this sense, abduction can also be defined as the semiotics of the possible. Is it possible to outline an abductive design method?

My contribution aims to discuss how abduction, and with it, everything that contributes to the formation of an inventive habit, can be considered as the ineliminable step of every design process. This is the case of Speculative Design, which has had the credit of introducing the notion of possibility into design thinking.