ABSTRACT: --------- Essays on Darwinism 1: Ontological Foundations Barry McMullin, School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, IRELAND. March 1992 Technical Report: bmcm9201 The problem tackled in this essay is to formulate ``Darwinian'' theory in a way which is divorced from any specifically biological interpretation. For my purposes, the crucial constraint on this abstract formulation of Darwinian theory is that it must qualify as a realisation of {\em unjustified variation and selective retention\/} in the sense of D.T.~Campbell [see .bib references below]---for it is (arguably) only thus that Darwinian evolution can lead to the spontaneous growth of ``knowledge''. I hope that such an abstract formulation might help to clarify the application of the theory even in its native biological setting; but, more importantly, it seems to me that this exercise is a necessary pre-requisite for the valid application of Darwinian principles in any domain {\em other\/} than conventional, terrestrial, biology---such as the emerging field of study commonly referred to as {\em Artificial Life}. In attempting to solve the problem of formulating a satisfactory, abstract, version of Darwinism, I introduce a novel ontological category: the Similarity-lineage, or {\em S-lineage}. With the aid of this hybrid category, which combines some aspects of both a class and an individual, I argue that Darwinian evolution relies on a process of S-lineage selection---which is to say that S-lineages are, in a certain precise sense, the elusive Darwinian {\em units of selection}. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ .bib entry for *this* TR: ------------------------- @TECHREPORT{ McMullin:DarwinianOntology, AUTHOR = "Barry McMullin", TITLE = "Essays on Darwinism. 1: Ontological Foundations", INSTITUTION = "School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University", YEAR = "1992", MONTH = Mar, NUMBER = "{\tt bmcm9201}", TYPE = "Technical Report", ADDRESS = "Dublin 9, Ireland", URL = "ftp://ftp.eeng.dcu.ie/pub/autonomy/bmcm9201/" } +++++++++++++++++++++++ REFERENCES: ----------- @ARTICLE{ Campbell:BlindVariationInCreativeThought, AUTHOR = "Donald T. Campbell", TITLE = "Blind Variation and Selective Retention in Creative Thought as in Other Knowledge Processes", JOURNAL = "Psychological Review", YEAR = 1960, VOLUME = 67, NUMBER = 6, PAGES = "380--400" } @INCOLLECTION{ Campbell:BlindVariationAsGeneralStrategy, AUTHOR = "Donald T. Campbell", TITLE = "Blind Variation and Selective Survival as a General Strategy in Knowledge-Processes", CROSSREF = "Yovits:SelfOrganizingSystems", PAGES = "205--231" } @INCOLLECTION{ Campbell:EvolutionaryEpistemology, AUTHOR = "Donald T. Campbell", TITLE = "Evolutionary Epistemology", CROSSREF = "Schilpp:Popper", PAGES = "413--463 (Book~I)" } @INCOLLECTION{ Campbell:UnjustifiedVariation, AUTHOR = "Donald T. Campbell", TITLE = "Unjustified Variation and Selective Retention in Scientific Discovery", CROSSREF = "Ayala:PhilosophyOfBiology", CHAPTER = 9, PAGES = "139--161" } @BOOK{ Ayala:PhilosophyOfBiology, EDITOR = "Francisco Jose Ayala and Theodosius Dobzhansky", TITLE = "Studies in the Philosophy of Biology", BOOKTITLE = "Studies in the Philosophy of Biology", PUBLISHER = "The Macmillan Press Ltd.", ADDRESS = "London", YEAR = 1974 } @BOOK{ Schilpp:Popper, EDITOR = "Paul Arthur Schilpp", TITLE = "The Philosophy of Karl Popper", BOOKTITLE = "The Philosophy of Karl Popper", PUBLISHER = "Open Court", ADDRESS = "Illinois", YEAR = 1974, VOLUME = "XIV", SERIES = "The Library of Living Philosophers" } @BOOK{ Yovits:SelfOrganizingSystems, EDITOR = "Marshall C. Yovits and Scott Cameron", TITLE = "Self-Organizing Systems", BOOKTITLE = "Self-Organizing Systems", PUBLISHER = "Pergamon Press", ADDRESS = "Oxford", YEAR = 1960, NOTE = "Proceedings of an interdisciplinary conference, 5~and 6~May, 1959" } +++++++++++++++++