Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Sophisticated selectionism as a general theory of knowledge

  • Published:
Biology & Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Human knowledge is a phenomenon whose roots extend from the cultural, through the neural and the biological and finally all the way down into the Precambrian “primordial soup.” The present paper reports an attempt at understanding this Greater System of Knowledge (GSK) as a hierarchical nested set of selection processes acting concurrently on several different scales of time and space. To this end, a general selection theory extending mainly from the work of Hull and Campbell is introduced. The perhaps most drastic change from previous similar theories is that replication is revealed as a composite function consisting of what is referred to as memory and synthesis. This move is argued to drastically improve the fit between theory and human-related knowledge systems. The introduced theory is then used to interpret the subsystems of the GSK and their interrelations. This is done to the end of demonstrating some of the new perspectives offered by this view.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Culture is here used very broadly to denote everything that potentially accumulates as a result of human cognitive activity; not unlike Popper’s “3rd world” or Simon’s “the artificial’ ’(Popper 1979; Simon 1969).

  2. What is it to be prescient? It is important to briefly discuss this question since it has such a strong bearing on the explanatory values of selection theories. The answer depends on what we mean by the question; in this case on what we are willing to qualify as being prescient. If we mean that man can know what the future holds in an absolute sense, then the scientific answer must be “no.” But, then again, in that sense it seems that she does not know anything at all regardless of whether the proposed object of knowledge lies in the future, past or present. If we instead mean that she is capable of making statements about the future that are sharply biased toward correspondence with future states, then the answer must be “yes.” Prescience, in this sense, is nevertheless a remarkable ability: it is decidedly something more than an ordinary fit between system and environment; it is more than just inductive achievements gained through past BVSR dynamics. It is, however, by all means an empirical rather than a metaphysical problem.

  3. The wide naturalist notion of knowledge used by Campbell is employed here (Campbell 1960).

  4. In Dennett’s terminology, cranes are ok but skyhooks are not (Dennett 1995).

  5. Campbell characterized knowledge as a “fit between system and environment” (Campbell 1974). Although I agree with what Campbell means (on my reading at least), this characterization is still fraught with problems and one needs to be clear on what is intended. The terms “fit” and “fitness” have particular theoretical uses in evolutionary biology that hinge on the soundness of assuming environments to be sufficiently stable over time. For example, we may ask what happens in a population if a trait appears that has such and such fitness. Now, regardless of the constancy of this trait, its reproductive potential of course depends on its interactions with this environment. Hence, fitness may change at any time if the environment to which “it fits” changes. This happens seldom enough (or in a regular enough fashion; e.g. as an arms race between members of two species) in biology that fitness remains theoretically useful. In cultural systems, however, one must seriously wonder if it does not happen frequently enough—almost as a rule—that many of the traditional theoretical roles of fitness disappear. The usage here of “instances of fit,” “fitness” and other related concepts must be viewed with these complications (which need to be worked out) in mind.

  6. Excluding some of the closer extant relatives of jawless fish, e.g. hagfish and lampreys.

  7. If there is something to win autonomy from, that is. Biological knowledge systems, since they arose from physicochemical systems that were not knowledge system themselves, have no parent knowledge process.

  8. There is of course also an existential dimension to the particular case of culture and social life since the sense in which we are our biological selves in the first place is not straightforward, see (Sartre 1993)

References

  • Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Walter P (2002) Molecular biology of the cell, 4th edn. Garland Publishing

  • Aunger R (2002) The electric meme. The Free Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackmore S (1999) The meme machine. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Boesch C (2003) Is culture a golden barrier between human and chimpanzee? Evol Anthropol 12:82–91

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boulding K (1981) Evolutionary Economics. Sage, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R, Richerson PJ (1985) Culture and the evolutionary process. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R, Richerson PJ (2005) Not by genes alone. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradie M (1986) Assessing evolutionary epistemology. Biol Philos 1:401–459

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brandon RN (1988) The levels of selection: a hierarchy of interactors. In: Plotkin H (ed) The role of behavior in evolution. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 51–71

    Google Scholar 

  • Burnet FM (1957) A modification of Jerne’s theory of antibody production using the concept of clonal selection. Aust J Sci 20:67–68

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell DT (1960) Blind variation and selective retention in creative thought as in other knowledge processes. Psychol Rev 67(6):380–400

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell DT (1974) Evolutionary epistemology. In: Schilpp PA (ed) The philospohy of Karl Popper. La Salle, Open Court, pp 413–463

    Google Scholar 

  • Changeux J-P (1985) Neuronal man: the biology of mind. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Changeux J-P, Connes A (1989) Conversations on mind, matter and mathematics (English translation from French, title of the original is “Matière à Pensée” 1989). Princeton University Press, Princeton

  • Changeux J-P, Ricoeur P (2000) What makes us think? (English translation from French, title of the original is “Ce qui nous fait penser?” 1998). Princeton University Press, Princeton

  • Cziko GA (1995) Without miracles. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Cziko GA (2001) Universal selection theory and the complementarily of different types of blind selection and selective retention. In: Heyes C, Hull DL (eds) Selection theory and social construction: the evolutionary naturalistic epistemology of Donald T. Campbell. State University of New York Press, pp 15–34.

  • Dawkins R (1976) The selfish gene. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins R (1983) Universal Darwinism. In: Bendall DS (ed) Evolution from molecules to man. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 403–425

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett DC (1995) Darwin’s dangerous idea. Simon and Schuster, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Donald M (2001) A mind so rare: the evolution of human consciousness. W. W Norton and Company, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelman GM (1987) Neural Darwinism: the theory of neuronal group selection. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelman GM (1993) Bright air, brilliant fire. Harper Collins, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelman GM (2004a) The mind is wider than the sky. Yale University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelman GM (2004b) Biochemistry and the sciences of recognition. J Biol Chem 279(9):7361–7369

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edmonds B (2005) The revealed poverty of the gene-meme analogy-why memetics per se has failed to produce substantive results. J Meme-Evol Models Inform Transmission 9

  • Eigen M (1971) Self-organization of matter and the evolution of biological macromolecules. Naturwissenschaften 58(10):465–523

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eigen M (2002) Error catastrophe and antiviral strategy. Proc Nat Acad Sci 99(21):13374–13376

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert W (1986) The RNA world. Nature 319:618

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gould SJ (2002) The structure of evolutionary theory. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodfrey-Smith P (2000) The replicator in retrospect. Biol Philos 15(3):403–423

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths PE, Gray RD (1994) Developmental systems and evolutionary explanation. J Philos 91:277–304

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hayes C, Hull DL (2001) Selection theory and social construction. State University of New York Press

  • Heidegger M (1962) Being and time. Harper and Row, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodgson GM (2002) Darwinism in economics: from analogy to ontology. J Evol Econ 12:259–281

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hodgson G, Knudsen T (2004) The firm as an interactor: firms as vehicles for habits and routines. J Evol Econ 14:281–307

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffmann JA (2004) Primitive immune systems. Immunol Rev 198:5–9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hull DL (1980) Individuality and selection. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 11:311–332

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hull DL (1988) Interactors versus vehicles. In: Plotkin HC (ed) The role of behavior in evolution. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 19–50

  • Hull DL (2001a) In search of epistemological warrant. In: Heyes C, Hull DL (eds) Selection theory and social construction: the evolutionary naturalistic epistemology of Donald T. Campbell. State University of New York Press, pp 155–168

  • Hull DL (2001b) Science and selection. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Hull DL, Langman RE, Glenn SS (2001) A general account of selection: biology, immunology, and behavior. Behav Brain Sci 24(3):511–573

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jerne N (1955) The natural-selection theory of antibody formation.Proc Nat Acad Sci 41(11):67–68

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lakatos I (1978) The methodology of scientific research programmes. In: Worrall J (ed) Philosophical papers. Collected papers and Gregory Curry, vol 1. Cambridge University Press

  • Lane DA (2005) Hierarchy, complexity, society. In: Pumain D (ed) Hierarchy in natural and social sciences, Springer, pp 81–120

  • Lorentz K (1977) Behind the mirror. Methuen, London

  • Lorentz K (1982) Kant’s doctrine of the a priori in the light of contemporary biology. In: Plotkin HC (ed), Learning, development and culture. Wiley, pp 121–143

  • Mayr E (1989) Toward a new philosophy of biology: observations of an evolutionist. Harvard University Press

  • Maynard-Smith J, Szathmáry E (1995) Major transitions in evolution. W.H. Freeman Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • McKelvey B (1982) Organizational systematics. University of California Press, Berkeley

    Google Scholar 

  • Mercader J, Panger M, Boesch C (2002) Excavation of a Chimpanzee stone tool site in the African rainforest. Science 296:1452–1455

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson RR (2007) Universal Darwinism and evolutionary social science. Biol Philos 22(1):73–94

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson RR, Winter SG (1982) An evolutionary theory of economic change. Belknap Press, Harvard University

  • Popper K (1979) Objective knowledge, an evolutionary approach, Revised edn. Oxford University Press, New York

  • Price GR (1995) The nature of selection. J Theor Biol 175:389–396

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sanz CM, Morgan DB (2007) Chimpanzee tool technology in the Goualougo Triangle, Republic of Congo. J Hum Evol 52:420–433

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sartre J-P (1993) Being and nothingness. Washington Square Press

  • Saviotti PP (1996) Technological evolution, Variety and the economy. Edward Elgar Publishing

  • Simon HA (1969) The sciences of the artificial. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Schulenburg H, Kurz CL, Ewbank JJ (2004) Evolution of the innate immune system: the worm perspective. Immunol Rev 198:36–58

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sober E, Wilson DS (1994) A critical review of philosophical work on the units of selection problem. Philos Sci 61:534–555

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sterelny K, Smith KC, Dickison M (1996) The extended replicator. Biol Philos 11(3):377–403

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank in particular David Lane, Camille Roth and other researchers and students at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, for enlightening discussions on these topics. I also want to thank Martin Nilsson Jacobi, Kristian Lindgren and several others in the center for complex system at Chalmers, Göteborg, Sweden. Peter Nylén has also provided his valuable insights and given me the opportunity to discuss these question in depth. Finally, I wish to thank Kim Sterelny and a number of anonymous referees for their efforts with this manuscript. The work was funded in part by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and in part by Chalmers. Also, the European Center for Living Technology, University of Venice Ca’Foscari, Italy, has kindly provided space and other resources.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Complex Systems Group, Division for Physical Resource Theory, Chalmers, Goteborg, 412 96, Sweden

    Claes Andersson

Authors
  1. Claes Andersson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claes Andersson.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Andersson, C. Sophisticated selectionism as a general theory of knowledge. Biol Philos 23, 229–242 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-007-9085-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-007-9085-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation