L. Magnani (2017), The Abductive Structure of Scientific Creativity. An Essay on the Ecology of Cognition, Springer, Cham.

This book takes advantage of a new eco-cognitive model of abduction to emphasizes the distributed and embodied nature of scientific cognition. Its main focus is on the knowledge-enhancing virtues of abduction and on the productive role of scientific models. What are the distinctive features that define the kind of knowledge produced by science? To provide an answer to this question, the book addresses at first the idea of Aristotle, who already pointed out to the essential inferential and distributed role of external cognitive tools and epistemic mediators in abductive cognition .This is analyzed in depth from both the points-of-view of a naturalized logic and an ecology of cognition: it is shown how the maximization of cognition, and in turn of the abducibility, which are two typical goals of science, is related to a few fundamental aspects: the optimization of the eco-cognitive situatedness; the maximization of changeability of both the input and the output of the inferences involved; a high information-sensitiveness; and the need of keeping record of the “past life” of abductive inferential practices. Finally, the book explains how some impoverished epistemological niches, which have been generated as a consequence of a growing epistemic irresponsibility associated with the commodification and commercialization of science, are seriously jeopardizing the flourishing development of human creative abduction in modern times.