A GENERAL 'SELECTION THEORY' 171

When scientist's formulate new ideas, it seems unlikely that they do so without consider-
ing the constraints which the theory must satisfy. Hull's (1988) discussion of "Lamarckism"
and "intentionality" downplays the disanalogy between chance mutations and scientists'
intentions in solving problems:

Right now genetic mutations occur by "chance." However, in the very near future,
biologists will be able to generate any genetic mutations they see fit. When that occurs,
intentionality will play the same role in both biological and conceptual change. I doubt
that in such an event critics will instantly become converted. If I am correct in my
guess, then the role of intentionality in generating novelty must not have been all that
important of an objection in the first place.

However, regardless of what genetic engineers can do in the laboratory, if Hull wishes to
draw an analogy between the production of natural and conceptual variation, then inten-
tional strategies employed by scientists will not be analogous to variant production in
nature.
Our point here is not to provide an alternative analysis of scientific change in terms of
an instructive type theory, but merely to point out that Hull has not succeeded in eliminat-
ing instructive type theories from deserving further consideration.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank Joel Hagen, Pamela Henson, and Elizabeth Napier for their
comments and ideas.

A General 'Selection Theory', as Implemented in

Biological Evolution and in Social
Belief-Transmission-with-Modification in Science

DONALD T. CAMPBELL

Social Relations
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA 18015, U.S.A.

It is to be hoped that the seductive informality of David Hull's (1988) presentation does
not disguise two radical advances of great importance.

1. SELECTION THEORY

The valuable core for a theory of science is not the biological analogy to evolution per se,
but a more abstract selection theory. The adaptive aspects of biological evolution were
once so puzzling that they motivated an argument from the adaptive feature in the design

Biology and Philosophy 3 (1988) 171-177.

0 1988 by KluwerAcademic Publishers.
172 DONALD T. CAMPBELL

of organisms to the existence of a supernatural Designer. Dawkins, who in The Selfish

Gene (1976) seemed to some of us to be arguing against design above the level of the
gene, now (1986) finds organism-level design so impressive as to have made atheism an
implausible thesis until Darwin provided a biological application of the theory of unfore-
sighted-variation-selective-retention-and-reproductionto it. This can and should be stated
without exaggerating the extent to which the genes and the various replicated aspects of
biological form are adaptive to environmental opportunity (Kimura, 1983; Gould &
Lewontin, 1984). It is only for those features which are taken as adaptations (and for those
persons who find the adaptations puzzling) that Darwin seems to offer a plausible scenario
as to how such fit-to-environment might have come about. Epistemologically this is doubly
presumptive: a presumed problem, and a presumptive solution, "justified" at best only as
"plausible."
In his first four paragraphs, Hull makes it clear that it is this abstract model he is
employing, and that Selection Theory would be an appropriate name for it. (His citation of
the application of selection theory to acquired immunity (p. 124) should move us away
from limitation to biological-evolutionary specifics.) He seeks to apply this abstract
selection theory to conceptual change in science. Here, as for biological adaptation, there is
a parallel motivation for its use: He assumes that the beliefs of scientists "fit" to some
degree their presumed referents, yet is puzzled as to how this could have come about. "The
most puzzling feature of science is that it works so well in realizing its manifest goals, so
much better than any other social institution (p. 124)." He summarizes the goal of his
paper as "explaining the marvelous progress made during the past few centuries by
successive generations of scientists" (final paragraph). He regards conceptual change in the
successful sciences as being in the direction of improved fit between belief and reality even
though no direct comparison of beliefs with their referents is possible. For example: "... in
certain areas [of science] conceptual change gives every appearance of being progressive
(p. 146)."
For some scholars, the success of science is both obvious and not at all puzzling. They
have no need for naturalistic-epistemological theories as to how this success might be
possible. For other scholars (especially the social constructivist, ontologically relativist,
strong programme sociologists and historians of science, plus some philosophers) the
fact that there is no apodictic proof of improved competence of reference in temporal
sequences of conceptual change in science also removes any puzzle. Since there is no
completely demonstrable fit between scientific beliefs and any supposed independent
referents of these beliefs, there is no puzzle needing explanation. These two groups do not
need selection theory. David Hull is in neither camp. He needs selection theory because of
the conjunction of three reasons: he believes that conceptual change in science is progres-
sive; he finds this puzzling; and he has no alternative which is nearly as plausible as
selection theory in providing a conjectural solution to that puzzle. A number of us join him
in this.
While I won't take the effort or space to document his several assides that have given
me this impression, I believe this essay is epistemological in general intent (in spite of his
[1982] demurrer), focused on the validity and justification of scientific beliefs. I do not
believe that he feels he has answered the skeptics. (Kornblith's [1985] naturalistic epis-
temologists who feel so have been motivated primarily by the Gettier problem.) He persists
in the epistemological quest, while recognizing that naturalistic epistemology will have to
be done sharing the presumptive, hypothetical, contingent predicament of science, relin-
quishing aspirations to firmer foundations. If naturalistic epistemology be identified as
science-of-science, or metascience, this results in his being still more presumptive than first
order science, rather than in providing the entailing analysis that pure epistemology once
sought and found unavailable, or in any way providing a "first philosophy" offering
foundational undergirding to science. (See Campbell, 1988a, 1988b, for an expanded
analyses.)
 A GENERAL 'SELECTION THEORY' 173

Because of the repeated misunderstandings created in the minds of hasty readers, it was
my own mistake to have included selection theory as applied to sciences under the general
rubric of "evolutionary epistemology" (Campbell, 1974a), Similarly, it will turn out to have
been a mistake for Hull to have included the phrase "an evolutionary account" in his title.
We should have followed Baldwin's (1909) early lead and stuck to "Selection Theory." In
his first paragraph he warns "Because my concern is conceptual change in science, literal
applications are not going to get me far." But this will not be enough. He goes beyond this
(pp. 145-147) where he responds to the repeated claim (recently made, for example, by
Ruse 1986 & 19881, and Bradie [1988] that since science is a product of intentional
activity, and biological evolution by natural selection is not, science cannot be evolutionary
in a Darwinian sense. Being a purposeful problem solver, or a sub-cultural tradition of
purposeful problem solvers, does not make one clairvoyant or prescient. Therefore, a
specific application of general selection theory is needed by those puzzled by the success of
intentional problem solving, individual or group, synchronically or with historical con-
tinuity as in science. Too many philosophers of science lack this puzzlement. Hull's
example of artificial selection in plant and animal breeding (par. 61, ms. p. 38), goes part
way, but again will not be enough. The variations upon which such artificial selection
operates are haphazard, but the variations from which the communities of scientists select
are the product of intentional, intelligent creative thought. Of course, neither Hull nor I
would deny this. But so, too, are the rival theories that end up being regarded as wrong.
Variation and selection theories are needed at this point.
Let me again speak for myself. Inspired by Ashby's Design for a Brain (1952), I applied
selection theory to vision (Campbell, 1956) without ever denying that visual perceptions
occurred. There is no market for such an analysis because so few epistemologists find
perceptual achievements puzzling. Rather, they assume the efficacy of vision in operation.
Some may use biological evolution in past environments to explain how we came to have
such miraculous organs but fail to epistemologize the operation of the eyes in reflecting the
contemporary nvironment. Similarly, I was puzzled as to how creative thought could
generate competent novelty, and applied selection theory there too (Campbell, 1960) with
the help of many predecessors. This did not at all imply a denial that intelligent or creative
thought occurred in science or elsewhere. I merely added an extra epistemological puzzle
to which general selection theory seemed appropriate, a puzzle not generally shared. As a
temporary conceptual way station at least, most philosophers of science prefer to make
intelligent, creative thought also foundational, rather than take it as an epistemological
puzzle.
The fact that I (Campbell, 1974) was using a general selection theory, not the specific
models of biological evolution, should have been apparent from my citations to the many
who have noted the conceptual' parallel between trial and error learning and natural
selection (going back to Thorndike and Baldwin around 1900), the appendix listing 23
references to "Trial-and-Error and Natural Selection Models for Creative Thought," and
the one "On the Ubiquity of Multiple Independent Invention." But the overwhelming
recurrence of the insight into biological evolutionary explanations of the ontologically a
priori categories of perception, intuition, and thought (still being independently invented in
many individual intellectual histories) predisposed readers to an oversimplified scanning
of the several distinct projects which I had collected under the rubric "evolutionary
epistemology."
The overwhelming majority of those listed as evolutionary epistemologists (e.g. Camp-
bell, Heyes, and Callebaut, 1987) are such only with regard to employing biological
evolution to plausibly explain, or weakly justify, individual epistemic competence. This
includes such major figures as Quine, Sellars, Shimony, Alvin Goldman, Rescher, Lorenz,
Riedl, Wuketits, Vollmer, and many others. Appropriately, a number of analysts are
offering sharp distinctions between the two main enterprises. Bradie (1986) has distin-
guished between the EEM (biological evolution of cognitive mechanisms) program and
174 DONALD T. CAMPBELL

EET (evolutionary epistemology of theories). Vollmer (1987) has offered for the same dis-
tinction: EE (evolutionare Erkenntnistheorie) vs. EW (evolutionare Wissenschaftstheorie).
For EET and EW, I belatedly propose we substitute Selection Theory (Campbell, 1987).
That the theories of natural selection in biological evolution (prokaryotic, eukariotic, sexual
and asexual) represent other applications of Selection Theory can then be made in a
nonconfusing way.

2. A SOCIOLOGICAL EPISTEMOLOGY FOR SCIENCE

The second radical advance, which he flags with his Leitmotiv, is the profoundly social
and venially human nature of the scientific community. He begins (pp. 127-133) with the
puzzle as to why the egocentric, competitive participants recruited to science end up
behaving so altruistically. He answers this by describing a social incentive system that
makes "altruistic" behavior intelligently "selfish," for individuals with the social goal of
"conceptual inclusive fitness." (Why any animals would have such a goal must be a puzzle
to those sociobiologists who see life's only goal as biological inclusive fitness. However,
there is no doubt that it is a prevalent motive among intellectuals - be they theologians,
novelists, literary critics, historians or scientists.) This motive is not quite caught by
Dawkin's (1976) concept of the "selfish meme." For Hull, the vanity is an attribute of the
meme generator, not the meme per se, and needs must be so for a social sanction system
operating on scientists as persons rather than (even though by way of) their memes. Hull
has warned us that most of the citations implicit in his essay will not be provided, until his
book comes out. This neglect applies to his own works. In 1978 he hid away in the journal
Animal Behaviour an essay that no one but I have ever cited, entitled "Altruism in Science:
A Sociobiological Model of Cooperative Behaviour among Scientists" (Hull, 1978).
While he makes no claim to it in this essay, Hull has extensive experience as a
sociologist of science coming from his field research among the cladists and pheneticists
(participant observation carried to such an extreme that he even did a tour of duty as
editor of one of their journals). Those who attended our June, 1981, six day conference on
"Epistemologically Relevant Internalist Sociology of Science" at Cazenovia Lake, New
York (Campbell, 1981) will remember his fascinating accounts from this venture. Most
internalist sociologists of science (such as Kuhn) stress the role of authority, tradition, and
peer pressure in inhibiting innovation. Such emphases make theory-change inexplicable.
Hull's emphasis was in some ways the opposite. He reported as standard young Turk
careerist opportunism such tactics as: publicly attacking the biggest name in the field;
pseudo-innovation through relabeling old concepts; inventing new names for 'solutions' to
problems before those solutions have been discovered; exaggerating differences between
schools by suppressing attention to shared beliefs, etc. Let us hope that his new book will
include a full report on these studies, explicitly relating them to a selection theory which
makes it plausible that belief change in physical and biological science can often produce
increased competence of reference.

Alternative Selection Theoriesfor Conceptual Change in Science

As a background, let us note that refining selection theory in its application to the puzzle
of environmentally appropriate design in biological evolution has been going on for the last
125 years and is still not stabilized. The supply of variation has moved beyond mutation to
stress recombination within genetic loci (heterozygosity, dominance and recessivity) and
later to stress recombinatory effects across loci (interaction effects among genes, not just
the main effects posited in bean-bag genetics), the potential for which is increased by the
vast number of usually "neutral" genes and "selfish" DNA and RNA. To the Mendelian
 A GENERAL 'SELECTION THEORY' 175

inheritance patterns are now added haploidy, haplodiploidy, and non-Mendelian DNA in
the centrosome. To the initial focus on selection among variants in interaction with the
external environment (and hence explanatory of the fit of animal design to environment)
has been added "internal" selection for organismic coherence, inter-protein and other
structural compatibility, sexual selection, genetic drift, self-organization, and the like.
Mutations have been characterized as failures in the DNA reduplication process. (A
subclass of failures, that is, those that produce another DNA molecule even if not the
correct one.) But now we hear of DNA repair processes. Etc. Such developments can be
seen as refinements of Darwin's simplistic selection theory, compatible with its general
project, but much more complex.
Hull makes it clear that he expects an adequate selection theory of scientific competence
will in similarfashion require a long period of development, and the critical comparison of
alternative models. In that spirit, I want to criticize his sociological model.
Let me start with the presumed epistemological puzzle: How does it happen that the
beliefs of physicists come to fit the physical world they refer to? (To avoid the complacency
coming from our pseudoclairvoyant visual perception, let us focus on reference to invisible
physical entities and processes, as in electrical and magnetic phenomena.) The selectionist
theory of competent reference (as I shall attempt to make clear in the new introductory
chapter in the Campbell, 1988b collection) requires that this is only possible if the referent
somehow participates in the selection process. (This participation is implemented in
varying degrees of indirectness and vicariousness.) Thus our selection theory for scientific
validity must make it clear how the nature of the physical world has participated in the
selection of physicist's beliefs.
With the help of historians and sociologists of science, augmented by the still relatively
untapped resources of testimony from scientists, we can know a great deal about the
winnowing processes that select for the next generation from the vast reservoirs of varia-
tion (thought of, proposed and implemented in varying degrees) of concepts, laboratory
equipment, mathematical reduction techniques, etc., etc. Many of these selection processes
have no obvious role in improving the competence of reference physicists' beliefs, but
some plausibly do. These must be specified, however conjecturally. (Our naturalistic
epistemology of justifying innovations in scientific belief will, like all science, have to settle
for plausible scenarios.)
There is a simplying focus which comes from starting from a specific puzzle. Let me
explain this by reference again to biological evolution. While Mitchell (1987) is correct in
drawing attention to the desirability of specifing criteria of selection, nonetheless for any
given species, these are actually unenumerable. All of the exigencies of life are putting
selection pressure on each gene, including exigencies biologists and ecologists are not yet
aware of. But if we start with a specific design puzzle (e.g. "Why does the whiteness of the
polar bear seem to fit so well the whiteness of the terrain?"), we narrow the puzzle to
perhaps manageable dimensions. (E.g. the disguise value in stalking seals must outweigh
the higher metabolic costs in day light that result from whiteness. Such speculation must
eventually be disciplined by scientific discourse on the plausibility of this and other
scenarios.) Analogously, if we, as sociologists of science, start with the presumed puzzle of
presumably valid scientific belief, the explanatory chore we implement through selection
theory will be more manageable than if we attempt to specify all of the selective forces
operating on all of the belief variants in each time period in the long historical series.
My own preliminary attempts at a sociological selection theory for validity enhancing
belief change (Campbell, 1979, 1986, 1987) start with the search for plausible scenarios as
to how the never-directly-observed physical world might play some role in the selective
retention among belief variants within a scientific community. Without denying the social-
construction of scientific beliefs at the level of both "facts" and "theories," I look at the
ethnographies of experimental laboratories (e.g. Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Knorr-Cetina,
176 DONALD T. CAMPBELL

1981) and find them replete with proposed and abandoned laboratory processes and
explanatory concepts. In some instance, the abandonment might be due to the power of old
paradigms, or partisan local loyalty. For more, it seems to me, the recalcitrance of sub-
stances and disappointing laboratory outcomes is a part of the story. Looking at externalist
sociology of science (e.g. MacKenzie & Barnes, 1975, 1979), 1 find their explanation of the
victory of Mendalism over Pearsonism in the British biology ca. 1910 incomplete rather
than wrong, and would argue from cases of converts such as Darbishire and Morgan, that
aspects of the ambiguous experimental data which these two collected entered into the
social persuasion process, in part because of socially inculcated norms of open sharing of
data plus socially induced guilt feelings elicited when considering doctoring the evidence so
as to avoid conversion. Careerist self-interest was no doubt also involved, given their naive
(but at that time mainly correct) belief that they participated in a social system in which
they would benefit from being on the side most "replicated" or "confirmed" in future
research. I (1979) also argue that the special anti-tribal norms of science, while not lived
up to, provide a resource for innovative insubordination on the part of young scientists
which, in combination with a naive belief in "facts which speak for themselves" furthers
validity-enhancing belief change (even when the insubordination comes from an unresolved
Oedipus complex). That the norms of science call for rejection of religious traditions about
unobservable physical forces, and call for visible demonstration (even though vision is not
clairvoyant) of the supposed effects of the forces, through machinery open to peer inspec-
tion, further the plausibility of "the way the world is" playing some role, however small, in
scientific belief change. All of this Hull would agree with, but would find it disappointingly
lacking in any theoretical coherence comparable to that to be found in the modern theory
of biological evolution.
In a fragmentary way I, too, make use of analogies to biological exemplification of
selection theory. For example, I am currently stressing the analogy between the species
strategy of "trusting" the overwhelming bulk of its genome while exploring variations on a
minor part and Quine's (1951) omni-fallibilist holism of the last 12 paragraphs of "The
Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (e.g., Campbell, 1987, pp. 156-157). I (1987) have joined
Hull (1978) in making relevant Haldane's point that individual selection precludes self-
sacrificial altruism, in a bizarre scenario explaining why the ideology of science must be
anti-traditional even though selection-theory in its simplest form calls for blind retention as
well as blind variation. But these are opportunistic fragments. I have given priority to the
agenda of plausible scenarios as to how "the way the world is" could be one of the crude
sieves selecting among the plethora of scientific belief, and this has so far not produced any
theoretical elegance of an "evolutionary" sort.
Hull's validity-relevant sociology of science is of two types, informal and formal. On the
formal side, he offers us the rich insights of an expert participant observer: the inter-
weaving of competition and cooperation in the service of competition; the greater social
sanction for lying than for stealing; ingroup lying vs. outgroup lying; the testing of
opponents' claims only when these threaten one's own; etc., etc. While in his considerable
discussion of "Selection," the role of "physical reality" is not made explicit, extensions of
the exposition could easily make it so.
His formal theory, however, seems to me a mixed bag. Conceptual inclusive fitness is a
fine idea, so too is the demic structure of science, with both intrademic and interdemic
competition. Replicators, defined as all of the "elements of the substantive context of
science," seems fine, and I applaud his openness to heterogeneous types and sizes of unit.
Scientists and demes as interactors is put to good use. But, for science, to see selection as
"the differential extinction and proliferation of interactors"(p. 134), when these interactors
are scientists, seems to me wrong and to show too-close imitation of the biological model.
Certainly for science, the selection is much more directly on the replicators. Usually in
biology, interactors are vehicles, and so the formalism need not include the latter. But Hull
 SCIENCE AS A BIOECONOMIC SYSTEM 177

makes it clear that in science the vehicles (even if defined as Dawkins does) are only in
small part identical with scientists as interactors. Scientific texts and apparatus serve as an
exosomatic genome shared by the competing interactors. But even were a replicator/
interactor recipe applicable to both biological and conceptual evolution, the resulting
selection (whether of replicators or interactors) has no formal implications for increasing
validity in scientific conceptual evolution. Differential extinction and proliferation occurs in
religious cults as well, without producing increased validity in beliefs held about the
invisible causes of visible phenomena. The type-specimen method of reference seems to me
wrong in its focus on the history of names rather than on the history of the historical
entities (the apparatus-practice-concept syndromes) to which the names refer. And finally,
selective survival of term-tokens seems to me irrelevant to the issue of conceptual progress
in science.
I hope that readers who share my doubts about Hull's formal model will not let his
unfinished task blind them to two very significant achievements in this paper. These are: 1.
the shift away from biological parallelisms to a general selection theory; and 2. the
recognition that a selection theory for conceptual evolution in successful science will have
to be a sociology of science.

Science as a Bioeconomic System

MICHAEL T. GHISELIN

CaliforniaAcademy of Sciences
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, California 94118, U.S.A.

David Hull and I have enjoyed a wholesome mutualism for many years. We use and cite
each other's works extensively, and advocate broadly similar views. With respect to the
individuality of species, the connection is quite generally known. Lately Hull and I have
written books about the behavior of scientists that should be appearing in print at about
the same time (Ghiselin, 1988). The resemblances will be clear enough, and the acknowl-
edgements explicit. There will, however, be some important differences, and this seems like
an opportune moment to comment upon them.
Hull's theory is modelled upon sociobiology, mine on bioeconomics. Both theories aim
to account for aspects of scientists' behavior in terms of individualistic competition, and
both aim to show how what looks like inappropriate behavior is really quite reasonable.
But Hull sets himself the task of equating memes with genes (as replicators) yet nonetheless
finding an important place for scientists (as interactors). The notion that genes somehow
"cause" things to evolve is vaguely dished up as pablum for undergraduates, but rarely is
subjected to critical scrutiny. Sociobiologists claim that the gene is the "unit of selection."
Population geneticists do not agree with this claim, but for some reason philosophers listen
to the biologists-who do not understand genetics rather than those who do.
- Genes, of course, play an important role in evolution, but a bioeconomist would treat
them as just another resource. I can find no obvious correspondence between a gene and a
theory or an hypothesis. The notion of conceptual inclusive fitness seems a bit forced. Why
not just say that every organism tends to do that which maximized its ancestors' success? If

Biology and Philosophy 3 (1988) 177-178.

© 1988 by KluwerAcademic Publishers.