Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley used abductive reasoning to draw conclusions about the ionic basis of the action potential. Here we build on that initial proposal. First, we propose that Hodgkin and Huxley’s constitutive abductive reasoning has four features. Second, we argue that Hodgkin and Huxley are not alone in giving such arguments. Tolman, 1948, and Baumgartner, 1960, also gave such arguments. The implication is that such arguments are common enough in science that philosophers of science should pay more attention to them. Third, we propose that constitutive abduction describes a method that scientists use to confirm constitutive hypotheses that is an alternative to the mutual manipulability approach that is familiar in the New Mechanist literature.

Alan Hodgkin 和 Andrew Huxley 使用归纳推理得出了关于动作电位的离子基础的结论。在这里，我们以最初的提案为基础。首先，我们提出霍奇金和赫胥黎的本构性归纳推理有四个特征。其次，我们认为霍奇金和赫胥黎并不是唯一提出此类论点的人。Tolman， 1948 和 Baumgartner， 1960 也给出了这样的论点。这意味着这样的论点在科学中已经足够普遍，以至于科学哲学家应该更多地关注它们。第三，我们提出本构性绑架描述了科学家用来确认本构假设的一种方法，该方法是新机械论文献中熟悉的相互纵方法的替代方案。