Antonovskiy A.Y., Barash R.E. The Evolutionary Dimension of Scientific Progress, Social Epistemology, DOI: 10.1080

Abstract

This article considers problems that the biologically based general theory ofevolution is facing today when it is extrapolated to the problem of scientificprogress. It investigates how scientific theories can be interpreted as replacing each other, about what the external environment of scientific communication is, what institutions are responsible for the selection of the best theories, and the extent to which the autonomous mechanisms of scientific evolution are differentiated, namely, the mechanisms of randomvariation, natural selection, and inheritance. The authors deploy David Hull’s concept of causal individuation and Stephen Gould’s concept of semantic individuation, identifying the possibilities of reconciliation andsynthesis of these evolutionary approaches.The authors use ‘a complex multidimensional environment of scientificcommunication’, formed by the social, factual, and time dimensions ofscientific communication. This concept ‘removes’ the distinction betweenlocal and global optima and, consequently, eliminates the difference between problem-solving and semantic understandings of scientific pro-gress. It concludes that understanding the scientist’s consciousness asa ‘case-sorting machine’ eliminates the apparent inconsistency of the evolutionary metaphor and ‘saves the evolutionary analogy’, substantiat-ing the independence of the mechanism of random variations from the mechanisms of natural selection and stabilization of knowledge at thepopulation level.

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