Certainty, probability and abduction: why we should look to C.S. Peirce rather than Gödel for a theory of clinical reasoning Academic Article uri icon

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abstract

  • This paper argues that Gödel's proof does not provide the appropriate conceptual basis on which to counter the claims of evidence-based medicine. The nature of, and differences between, deductive, inductive and abductive inference are briefly surveyed. The work of the American logician C.S. Peirce is introduced as a possible framework for a theory of clinical reasoning which can ground the claims of both evidence-based medicine and its critics.

publication date

  • August 1997