abduce

For example, after glancing and seeing the eight ball moving towards us, we may abduce that the cue ball struck the eight ball.

Peirce said that to abduce a hypothetical explanation from an observed surprising circumstance is to surmise that may be true because then would be a matter of course.

Despite infinite possible explanations for any physical process that we observe, we tend to abduce a single explanation (or a few explanations) for this process in the expectation that we can orient better ourselves in our surroundings and disregard some possibilities.