Zen expected to become familiar with the classics of the Zen canon". A review of the early historical documents and literature of early Zen masters clearly reveals that they were well versed in numerous Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtras, including Madhyamaka. Especially the Lotus Sutra played a large role in the development of East Asian Buddhism, including Zen. Nevertheless, Zen is often pictured as anti-intellectual. This picture of Zen emerged during the Song Dynasty (960–1297), when Chán became the dominant form of Buddhism in China, and gained great popularity among the educated and literary classes of Chinese society. The use of koans, which
Abductive reasoning premise, but the truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed. (Indeed, it turns out that some swans are black.) Abductive reasoning allows inferring formula_2 as an explanation of formula_1. As a result of this inference, abduction allows the precondition formula_2 to be abduced from the consequence formula_1. Deductive reasoning and abductive reasoning thus differ in the direction in which a rule like "formula_2 entails formula_1" is used for inference. As such, abduction is formally equivalent to the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent (or "Post hoc ergo propter hoc") because of multiple possible explanations for formula_1. For example, in a