Abstract

David Hull’s book (1988) provides an evolutionary account of the development of science which pays attention to both the social and conceptual aspects of that process. Unlike most philosophers who only invoke Darwinian metaphors in a casual way, Hull takes the analogy between the biological evolution of species and the growth of scientific knowledge quite seriously and by providing abstract definitions of terms such as replicator, interactor and lineage, he makes it possible for us to see clearly the structural similarities between the two historical processes.Other symposiasts will comment on how tight that analogy really is. I must remark in passing that I have never understood the intense interest which evolutionary epistemologists take in this comparison. Surely our major job is to understand how science works, perhaps by using evolutionary theory as a fallible heuristic, but nothing seems to hinge on the extent of the formal analogy.