The adaptive landscape of science |
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Authors: | John S Wilkins |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Philosophy, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia |
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Abstract: | In 1988, David Hull presented an evolutionary account of science. This was a direct analogy to evolutionary accounts of biological
adaptation, and part of a generalized view of Darwinian selection accounts that he based upon the Universal Darwinism of Richard
Dawkins. Criticisms of this view were made by, among others, Kim Sterelny, which led to it gaining only limited acceptance.
Some of these criticisms are, I will argue, no longer valid in the light of developments in the formal modeling of evolution,
in particular that of Sergey Gavrilets’ work on adaptive landscapes. If we can usefully recast the Hullian view of science
as being driven by selection in terms of Gavrilets’ and Kaufmann’s view of there being “giant components” of high-fitness
networks through any realistic adaptive landscape, we may now find it useful to ask what the adaptive pressures on science
are, and to extend the metaphor into a full analogy. This is in effect to reconcile the Fisherianism of the Dawkins–Hull approach
to selection and replicators, with a Wrightean drift account of social constructionist views of science, preserving, it is
to be hoped, the valuable aspects of both.
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Keywords: | Adaptive landscape David Hull Theory change Selection |
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