Taking Simmel seriously in evolutionary epistemology

Donald T. Campbell outlines an epistemological theory that attempts to be faithful to evolution through natural selection. He takes his position to be consistent with that of Karl R. Popper, whom he credits as the primary advocate of his day for natural selection epistemology. Campbell writes that neither he nor Popper want to give up the goal of objectivity or objective truth, in spite of their evolutionary epistemology. In discussing the conflict between an epistemology based on natural selection and objective truth, Campbell cites an article by the German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel entitled ‘On a Connection of Selection Theory to Epistemology’, as presenting the issue in a notably forthright manner.The present essay summarizes Simmel's article, with the purpose of clarifying, in terms that Campbell apparently finds satisfactory, the conflict that Campbell acknowledges between an evolutionary epistemology and ultimate truth; the essay then examines the responses of Campbell and Popper to Simmel's position. While Campbell and Popper acknowledge the work of Simmel, their responses suggest something less than a full consideration of Simmel's position.     

自由与美的游戏追逐

当今的时尚变幻不定,关于时尚的本质及特性,早在一百多年前,德国哲学家齐美尔已从时尚的发生、社会功能、群体的心理特征等方面对时尚问题作过透辟的分析。时至今日,他的理论于我们对时尚的解读仍有很大的借鉴意义。     

Georg Simmel and naturalist interactivist epistemology of science

In 1895 sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel published a paper: ‘On a connection of selection theory to epistemology’. It was focussed on the question of how behavioural success and the evolution of the cognitive capacities that underlie it are to be related to knowing and truth. Subsequently, Simmel’s ideas were largely lost, but recently (2002) an English translation was published by Coleman in this journal. While Coleman’s contextual remarks are solely concerned with a preceding evolutionary epistemology, it will be argued here that Simmel pursues a more unorthodox, more radically biologically based and pragmatist, approach to epistemology in which the presumption of a wholly interests-independent truth is abandoned, concepts are accepted as species-specific and truth tied intimately to practical success. Moreover, Simmel’s position, shorn of one too-radical commitment, shares its key commitments with the recently developed interactivist–constructivist framework for understanding biological cognition and naturalistic epistemology. There Simmel’s position can be given a natural, integrated, three-fold elaboration in interactivist re-analysis, unified evolutionary epistemology and learnable normativity.