Ontological queries and evolutionary processes. Comments on Hull

Abstract

We lack an adequate ontology for discussing in a clear and disciplined way many of the philosophical problems which arise in connection with science. We lack a system of categories rich, general and rigorous enough for satisfactorily describing the similarities and differences which we intuitively detect among the entities and processes of different fields and sciences. David Hull has made well-known contributions to the clarification of certain ontological issues in biology, like the status of biospecies. In the discussion of those issues much of the burden is carried by ontological categories like individual, class and lineage, whose range of application is obviously much wider than just biology. In the target article Hull rightly points out that there are other cases of selection processes besides gene-based biological selection processes, for instance the selection processes which are at the base of the reaction of the immune system to antigens and of the cultural transmission of memes in science. Other examples could come from many other fields, including economics, linguistics and even computer science (evolution of programs). So he is right that the units used in the analysis of biological natural selection (genes, organisms, species) cannot be expected to work in the analysis of other types of selection processes. We need more general concepts, "units that are defined in terms that are sufficiently general to apply to all sorts of selection processes". And he goes on to define such ontological notions as replicator, interactor, selection and lineage (Hull 1988, p. 1 4 ). The main interest of Hull in the target article is the analysis of conceptual change in science. But science is a form of culture and much of what Hull has to say about science and conceptual evolution is not specific of science, but also applies to many other aspects of culture and cultural evolution, for example to art. Artists do not crave less for recognition than scientists do. They want their creations to be diffused as widely as possible and to be recognized as theirs. And sometimes they engage in acrimonious disputes about priority and plagiarism. Think of the dispute about the authorship of the well-known tune of Vangelis' Chariots of Fire. If anything, artists are likely to be still more zealous for recognition of their priority than scientists, as for them, besides being a matter of vanity and career, it is also a question of immediate economic concern, because of the fees and copyrights associated with recognised authorship. Traditional handicrafts are usually transmitted in a more or less anonymous way. In contrast to it, modern technology is proprietary, authorized, patented. Inventors and corporations try to maximize both the diffusion of their inventions and the recognition of their authorship. And the market is the basis of a selection process among the different inventions developed. So the maximizing of cultural fitness (of the frequency of the adoption and recognition of one's cultural innovations, assuming this to be a clear notion) is in no way restricted to science. Much of what Hull says about meme-based selection in science applies alsc to many other aspects of culture. Indeed, in the spirit of his previous