This chapter contrasts the theory of singular compositional abduction with Gilbert Harman’s picture of inference to the best explanation. Most notably, Harman’s work is meant to argue that warranted enumerative induction is a special case of inference to the best explanation. It is not, in the first instance, a theory of the scientific interpretation of experimental results. A key element in Harman’s inference to the best explanation is that it is a matter of warranted abductive inference. In trying to understand the scientific interpretation of a single experimental result, one should not assume a priori that an abductive interpretation is warranted. Instead, one should allow that the warrant for some hypothesis only emerges, if it ever does, over the course of a prolonged period of scientific investigation.

This chapter contrasts the theory of singular compositional abduction with Peter Lipton’s picture of inference to the best explanation. Where Lipton does intend his theory to apply to the scientific interpretation of experimental results, his approach does not involve extensive close reading of scientific experimental work. Moreover, where Lipton relies heavily on early work on contrastive explanation, this chapter argues that that account has limited applicability. It also indicates how his brief account of explanatory virtues have little to offer when it comes to abductive inferences from individual experimental results.