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DOWNWARD CAUSATION IN HIERARCHICALLY ORGANIZED BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS Campbell, D.T. (1974) "Downward causation in hierarchically organized biological systems," in F.J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky (eds.), Studies in the philosophy of biology: Reduction and related problems, ISBN 9780520026490, pp. 179-186. Reproduced by kind permission.
EVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY AND COMPLEX SYSTEMS: AN INTRODUCTION TO DONALD CAMPBELL'S APPROACH TO DOWNWARD CAUSATION
Donald T. Campbell (1916-1996; see Wikipedia entry) was an eminent psychologist, indeed all around prominent social scientist, with a doctorate from Berkeley, and who had a long academic and professional career, teaching stints at Lehigh, Syracuse, Northwestern, and other high level universities and institutions, as well as and at one time President of the American Psychological Association. Transdisciplinary in his themes, goals, and a quite impressive knowledge base, Campbell's research focused on bringing the major constructs of Darwinian evolution with what he held as their revolutionary implications into the study of cognition, the nature of science and how it progresses, and cultural and social evolution, all three areas exhibited in what he was probably best known for, namely, helping to inaugurate what came to be called "evolutionary epistemology".
Evolutionary Epistemology
According to Nathalie Gontier (2006) evolutionary epistemology is derived from the psychology and sociology of knowledge, the history and philosophy of science, cogni- tive science, and the basic tenets of Darwinian evolution. At the heart of these various disciplines is the notion of "progressive adaptation" which Campbell explained according to what he termed "blind-variation-and-selective-retention" (bvsr), the two basic ingredients in evolution. For Campbell, bvsr is how knowledge, the "epistemology" part of "evolutionary epistemology" of any sort is acquired. It is gained by way of interaction between an organism's cognitive faculties and the environments in which these cognitive capabilities operate.
Campbell's BSVR-grounded approach was based in part on Popper's view that science advances through the generation of hypotheses which are then affirmed or falsified by methodologically sound observations of the natural world as well as experimentation. "Blind variation" is behind the emergence of new theories through proposing conjectures. Then, selection refutes and selectively eliminates those conjectures that are empirically falsified. Campbell added that the same logic of blind variation and selective elimination/retention underlies all knowledge processes, not only scientific ones, although Gontier emphasizes a main goal of Campbell's evolutionary...