Abstract
Traditional logical empiricist and more recent historicist positions on the logic of discovery are briefly reviewed and both are found wanting. None have examined the historical detail now available from recent research on Darwin, from which there is evidence for gradual transition in descriptive and explanatory concepts. This episode also shows that revolutionary research can be directed by borrowed metascientific objectives and heuristics from other disciplines. Darwin's own revolutionary research took place within an ontological context borrowed from non evolutionary predecessors with methodological objectives borrowed from and justified by their success in Newton's physics. The logic of discovery is not a special form of inference from observation to theory, but rather a theory of the rationality of research, including principles bearing upon the rational choice of problems, or epistemic objectives, and heuristic, or means to solving the problems. Such choices can be justified only locally in the context of a relatively stable background ontology and substantive epistemology, not globally for all science.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Achinstein, P.: 1970, ‘Inference to Scientific Laws’, in R. Stuewer (ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Vol. V), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 87–111.
Achinstein, P.: 1987, ‘Scientific Discovery and Maxwell's Kinetic Theory’, Philosophy of Science 54, 409–434.
Barrett, P. H. (ed.): 1980, Metaphysics, Materialism, and the Evolution of Mind, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Beatty, J.: 1985, ‘Speaking of Spicies: Darwin's Strategy’, in D. Kohn (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, pp. 265–282.
Bowler, P.: 1983, The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, MD.
Bowler, P.: 1984, Evolution: The History of an Idea, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Carnap, R.: 1950, Logical Foundations of Probability, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Cornell, J. F.: 1984, ‘Analogy and Technology in Darwin's Vision of Nature’, Journal of the History of Biology 17 (3), 303–344.
Curtis, R. C.: 1986, ‘Are Methodologies Theories of Scientific Rationality?’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37, 135–181.
Darden, L.: 1982, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy of Science: Reasoning by Analogy in Theory Construction’, in P. Asquith and T. Nickles (eds.), PSA 1980, Vol. II, Philosophy of Science Association, East Lansing, MI.
DeBeer, G. (ed.): 1960, ‘Darwin's Notebooks on the Transmutation of Species’, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Historical Series 2(2–6), 27–199.
DeBeer, G. (ed.): 1967, ‘Darwin's Notebooks on the Transmutation of Species Part VI’, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Historical Series 3(5), 1–176.
Evans, L. T.: 1984, ‘Darwin's Use of the Analogy between Artificial and Natural Selection’, Journal of the History of Biology 17(1), 113–140.
Feyerabend, P. K.: 1962, ‘Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism’, in H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. III, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 28–97.
Feyerabend, P. K.: 1974, Against Method, New Left Press, London.
Ghiselin, M.: 1969, The Triumph of the Darwinian Method, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Greene, J. C.: 1959, The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought, Iowa State University Press, Ames, IA.
Gruber, H. and P.H. Barrett: 1974, Darwin on Man, E. P. Dutton, New York.
Hanson, N. R.: 1958, Patterns of Discovery, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Hempel, C. G.: 1966, Philosophy of Natural Science, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Herbert, S.: 1968, The Logic of Darwin's Discovery, Doctoral Dissertation, Brandeis, 1968.
Herschel, John: 1831, Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green.
Hesse, M. B.: 1966, Models and Analogies in Science, South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press.
Hodge, M. J. S.: 1983, ‘Darwin and the Laws of the Animate Part of the Terrestrial System (1835–1836)’, in Studies in the History of Biology, Vol. 7, pp. 1–106, Johns Hopkins Universitiy Press, Baltimore, MD.
Hodge, M. J. S.:and D. Kohn: 1985, ‘The Immediate Origins of Natural Selection’, in D. Kohn (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage, pp. 185–206, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Hull, D.: 1973, Darwin and His Critics: the Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Kleiner, S. A.: 1983, ‘A New Look at Kepler and Abductive Argument’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 14, 279–313.
Kohn, D.: 1980, ‘Theories to Work By: Rejected Theories, Reproduction, and Darwin's Path to Natural Selection’, Studies in the History of Biology 4, 67–170.
Kottler, M. J.: 1978, ‘Charles Darwin's Biological Species Concept and the Theory of Geographic Speciation: The Transmutation Notebook’, Annals of Science 35, 275–297.
Kuhn, T. S.: 1970, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Laudan, L.: 1980, ‘Why was the Logic of Discovery Abandoned?’ in T. Nickles (ed.), Scientific Discovery, Logic and Rationality, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, pp. 173–183.
Laudan, L.: 1981, Science and Hypothesis, D. Reidel, Dordrecht.
Laudan, L.: 1984, Science and Values, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Lyell, Charles: 1830–33, Principles of Geology, Vols. I–III, 1st ed., John Murray, London.
Lyell, Charles: 1835, Principles of Geology, Vols. I–III, 4th ed., John Murray, London.
Nickles, T.: 1985, ‘Beyond Divorce: Current Status of the Discovery Debate’, Philosophy of Science 52, 177–206.
Ospovat, D.: 1981, The Development of Darwin's Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Popper, K. R.: 1968, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Harper and Row, New York, NY.
Recker, D. A.: 1987, ‘Causal Efficacy: The Structure of Darwin's Argument Strategy in the Origin of Species’, Philosophy of Science 54(2), 147–175.
Reichenbach, H.: 1938, Experience and Prediction, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Rudwick, M. J. S.: 1976, The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Paleontology, 2nd ed., Science History Publications, New York.
Ruse, M.: 1975, ‘Darwin's Debt to Philosophy’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 66, 159–81.
Ruse, M.: 1979, The Darwinian Revolution: Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Schweber, S. S.: 1985, ‘The Wide British Context in Darwin's Theorizing’, in D. Kohn (ed.) The Darwinian Heritage, pp. 35–70, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Sulloway, F. J.: 1982, ‘Darwin's Conversion: The Beagle Voyage and Its Aftermath’, Journal of the History of Biology 15, 325–396.
Thayer, H. S.:and Randall, J. H.: 1953, Newton's Philosophy of Nature, Haffner Books, New York, NY.
Whewell, W.: 1840, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Parker, London.
Whewell, W.: 1937, History of the Inductive Sciences, Parker, London.
Young, R.: 1969, ‘Malthus and the Evolutionists: The Common Context of Biological and Social Theory’, Past and Present 43, 109–145.
Young, R.: 1971, ‘Darwin's Metaphor: Does Nature Select?’, Monist 55, 442–503.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kleiner, S.A. The logic of discovery and Darwin's pre-Malthusian researches. Biol Philos 3, 293–315 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00053657
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00053657