President’s Address at the AY2025 Graduate Program Fall Commencement Ceremony
On this special day, I would like to offer my heartfelt congratulations to all of you receiving your master’s or doctoral degree. On behalf of Kyoto Institute of Technology, I extend to you my sincere recognition of your achievement. I also wish to offer congratulations and gratitude to your family, persons who have stood by you throughout your studies, and to the faculty members who have guided your research.
At today’s ceremony, 35 students are receiving a master’s degree and 17, a doctoral degree. Adding these degrees to the total KIT that has awarded since the Graduate School of Science and Technology was established in 1988, means that we have now conferred a total of 13,594 master’s degrees and 1,199 doctoral degrees. You now hold the title of Master of Engineering, a Doctor of Philosophy, or a Doctor of Engineering.
As you are aware, research at the graduate level differs greatly from that of undergraduate study. I am confident that it will serve you well during your career. I will now speak about a specific difference in graduate-level learning in terms of applied and fundamental research—the concept of abduction. Abduction is also referred to as “hypothesis formation.”
Applied research aims at practical use or implementation, with engineering serving as a prime example. The essence of engineering lies in identifying a given premise—such as a principle or law of nature—and arriving at a useful outcome, while formulating the concrete process that connects the two. The process of development you learned about and internalized during graduate school is known as abduction, a mode of reasoning distinct from the deductive and inductive methods emphasized in undergraduate studies.
Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, an expert in precision engineering and former president of the University of Tokyo, uses the analogy of architecture to describe abduction. In this analogy, the premise corresponds to the structure of a building, while the conclusion aligns with the functions it must serve—for example, livability. No matter how the residents choose to live, an architect must design a house that fulfills these requirements. This describes the thought process known as abduction. I am sure that even those of you who did not major in architecture have experienced moments in your research where you created something new, that was neither deductive nor inductive, through reasoning.
Those of you who engaged in fundamental research also employed abduction. Fundamental research is not directly aimed at specific applications, but at advancing knowledge, theory, or the understanding of phenomena. It has been noted, for instance, that Newton performed two acts of abduction in formulating his three laws of motion: first, in narrowing his research focus, and second, in establishing the laws themselves.
Selecting a focus of study is itself a crucial act of abduction. Newton, deeply versed in optics and alchemy, deliberately excluded light and chemical reactions from his inquiry into motion. Hindsight proved this a brilliant choice, yet it was not one justifiable by deduction or induction. This initial act of abductive framing paved the way for a second, equally creative leap: the derivation of the unprecedented laws of inertia, motion, and action-reaction—an achievement that also required abduction.
Some have argued that Newton’s laws are inductive generalizations. However, the logician Charles Peirce distinguished induction from abduction: induction infers further examples obtained from observed facts, whereas abduction begins with facts and infers or projects from them to arrive at distinct facts that cannot be directly observed. Newton’s laws inferred truths that were not observable in his time, showing clearly that they were not merely inductive experimental formulas. Peirce thus established abduction as a scientific and logical mode of thought distinct from deduction and induction. He called it the “logic of inquiry” and regarded it as the most important mode of reasoning in scientific discovery and creative thought.
At KIT, we have long emphasized the importance of design thinking and artistic thinking. I believe these essentially refer to abduction. It is only natural that the faculty of architecture first advocated these modes of thought at our institution, since architecture is paradigmatic of abduction. Abduction in also indispensable to engineering aimed at value creation—a core mission of our university—as well as to the expansion of knowledge, the creation of new knowledge, and scientific discovery.
In your graduate research here, each of you has encountered abduction—thinking, that is neither deductive nor inductive—in some form. I hope you will make full use of that experience, in your professional lives, or in further doctoral study as you strive to create new value. For those of you who were mature doctoral program students and will be returning to your careers, I encourage you to apply your graduate school experience to create value in new ways, distinct from those of your previous career. Building on your studies here, I sincerely hope you will contribute to actualization of the vision of Kyoto Institute of Technology: the creation of a harmonious and prosperous society.
Once again, I offer you my heartfelt congratulations and warmly wish you every success in your future endeavors.
September 25, 2025
Masahiro Yoshimoto
President, Kyoto Institute of Technology