Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality and the Sociology of Knowledge

This is a collection of essays by the leaders of what has been called the most important development in the theory of knowledge since the 18th century: namely evolutionary epistemology. The "motif" for this volume is struck in Bartley's opening chapter: "Philosophy of biology versus Philosophy of Physics" and is continued in Sir Karl Popper's Darwin lecture, Donald T. Campbell's application of Darwinian theory to creative thought processes, and in the debate over the theories of Campbell and Gunter Wachtershauser on the origins of vision. Gerhard Vollmer examines and attempts to refute critics of evolutionary epistemology who have argued that it is circular, contradictory, or fallacious in some other way; and the second part of the volume is devoted to the debate between Bartley and Radnitzky, on one hand, and Post and Watkins on the other, on the soundness, and freedom from paradox, of the nonjustificational logic underlying evolutionary epistemology. The third part of the volume attempts to show how an evolutionary and nonjustificational approach affects the sociology of knowledge.
It begins with Peter Munz's debunking of the views of Richard Rorty, and continues with Antony Flew's attack on the Edinburgh school. The volume closes with Bartley's essay "Knowledge Is Not a Product Fully Known to Its Producer" - in which he calmly removes all the theoretical underpinnings of the sociology of knowledge.