The attainment of scientific enlightenment is the chief end for which Charles Sanders Peirce constructs the theorems, theories and systems whose logical structures are described in his writings. Could we sum up the differences and similarities at issue here between him, Hopkins and Baker by saying that whereas in the poetic works of Hopkins, including among them parts of his journals, the as-if is dominant but capable of subserving the if-then of science, and that whereas in Baker's journals the as-if and the if-then are of roughly equal importance, in the structures Peirce describes and constructs, the if-then is more profoundly engaged than the as-if? Almost, but not without oversimplification. To adopt this perspective would be to pay too little heed to the temporal and logical priorities of scientific research and to the place in it occupied by what Peirce calls abduction or retroduction, meaning by that the formation of hypotheses. Abduction is retroduction because it looks back to observations that have already been made, such observations as some of those made by Baker and Hopkins. But it also looks forward to observations that have not yet been made. A hypothesis is a prediction of a law or model proposed by the imagination prompted by observations made so far, and by guesses with regard to what future experience or experiment may bring. As an educated guess at how the facts will bear out or fail to bear out the imagined hypothesis the connective if-then will also be brought into action. This action is the making of the step from the as-if – Hopkins’ pattern or design – to the if-then. It is the step that determines whether a currently held hypothesis will be maintained.

This ‘will be’ is a large part of what Peirce wishes to highlight in what he understands by ‘pragmatism’, later ‘pragmaticism’, defined as the view that ‘there is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice’. Peirce continues the tradition to which Scotus and Hopkins belong of putting emphasis upon the fundamentality of praxis.