An Evolutionist in an Epistemological Wonderland

The paper on cascading chromosomal speciation and hybrid sinks which follows this preface was written in 1977. It faced surprising and initially incomprehensible difficulties in reviews. The epistemology and heuristic organization of the "comparative approach'' used was incommensurable with the reviewers' Kuhnian paradigms. To provide a "key" for translating from the comparative heuristic, the epistemology of the comparative approach is explored as this applies to understanding the problem of speciation. Communication difficulties trace from three Kuhnian revolutionary crises: 1. in evolutionary theory over the species problem and speciation, 2. in the methodological foundations of evolutionary biology over "logics" of confirmation, refutation, and discovery, and 3. in the foundations of scientific philosophy over what scientific knowledge is and how it grows. The comparative approach is a heuristic method for rationally discovering, independently of a priori theories, correlations among features of the present which probably reflect causal connections with the actions of law-like evolutionary processes. Once these correlations are identified, the ad hoc construction of a realistic model of the process is greatly simplified. The program for discovery by comparison gives the ad hoc model substantial epistemic realism. This realism may be diminished or increased by the results of hypothetico-deductive testing.