Evolutionary epistemology

Evolutionary epistemology noted to three distinct topics: 1 a biological evolution of cognitive mechanisms in animals & humans, 2 a theory that cognition itself evolves by natural selection, together with 3 the study of a historical discovery of new summary entities such(a) as abstract number or abstract usefulness that necessarily precede the individual acquisition and use of such(a) abstractions. As a branch of inquiry in epistemology, evolutionary epistemology lies at the crossroads of philosophy and evolutionary biology.

Process of discovering new abstract entities

"Evolutionary epistemology" can also refer to the opposite of ontogenetic epistemology, namely phylogenetic epistemology as the historical discovery and reification of abstractions that necessarily precedes the learning of such(a) abstractions by individuals. Piaget dismissed this possibility, stating

Piaget was mistaken in so quickly dismissing the analyse of phylogenetic epistemology, as there is much historical data usable about the origins and evolution of the various notational systems that reify different kinds of abstract entity.

Popper made its first comprehensive treatment in his 1970 article "Sketch of an Evolutionary Epistemology", after Donald T. Campbell had coined the phrase in a letter to Popper in 1963. Campbell wrote on evolutionary epistemology in 1974; Piaget alluded to it in 1974 and spoke the concept as one of five possible theories in The Origins of Intelligence in Children 1936.