Evolutionary Epistemology, Genetic Epistemology, History and Neurology

Abstract

The papers I will comment upon (those by Gillieron, Lamontagne, and Miller) were brought together because all three of them are concerned with ‘genetic epistemology’. As the editors of this book have remarked, an EE looks for a model of the history of science in phylogenesis, while Piaget himself has mainly examined the analogies between ontogenesis and the development of concepts, in his genetic psychology in general and in his main treatise on GE (3 vols.) in particular. Piaget & Garcia (1983) offer the only fully worked out parallel between the history of science and genetic epistemology. One might thus claim that GE does not belong to EE. If this were true, the models offered in the papers I am going to discuss would fall outside the scope of EE. They would simply be examples of a naturalistic epistemology according to which the study of the evaluation and history of science must itself be a science. The sciences taken as paradigms are different however: deductive neurology in Lamontagne’s case, genetic psychology (and implicitly embryology) in Gillieron’s case and gestalt psychology added to genetical psychology in Miller’s case.