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• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Eric Foner, Radical Individualism In America: Revolution to Civil War
• I: Methodology
• Scientific Paradigms and History
• Kuhn's Paradigm
• Paradigm Choice, Art, and Reason
• Do Concepts Mold Percepts?
• Paradigms Vs. Research Programmes
• Kuhn and Historical Truth
• Paradigms and Determinism
• A Historian Between Paradigms
• Survival of the Fittest Paradigms?
• Fumbling Toward Truth
• Necessary Truths and Reality
• Economic Laws
• “pure” Vs. “grubby” Knowledge
• Paradigms and Social Change
• II: Consensus, Obedience, and Dissent
• State and Society
• Consensus and Authority
• Civil Disobedience
• Dissent and Virtue
• Underdevelopment Vs. Consensus
• Democracy Vs. Elitism
• Majority Tyranny
• Majority Frustration
• Consensus Vs. Politics
• Consensus and Rights
• Consensus Vs. Majority Rule
• III: Consent and Coercion
• The Right Against Coercion
• Private Property and Coercion
• Consent, Coercion, and Property
• Threats Vs. Offers
• A Clockwork Orange, Freedom, and Coercion
• Weak Will Vs. Compulsion
• Freedom and Using Others
• Equality and Social Coercion
• Human Action Vs. Behavior
• IV: Regulation
• The Regulating Class
• Regulation and Revolution
• Land Expropriation
• State Planning
• Hoover As Regulator
• State Science Research
• The Costs of Research
• Anti-trust
• Sec Regulation
• Sunset Laws
• V: Social Control
• Power and Servility
• State Vs. Education
• Public Vs. Private Education
• Public Schools Vs. Privacy
• Truant Officers As Scapegoats
• Were Professionals Technocrats?
• The Courts and Social Control
• The Army and Social Control
• Land Use and Control
• VI: The Liberal Tradition
• The History of Liberalism
• Freedom and Progress
• Reason and Progress
• Individualism, Property, and Revolt
• Liberal Class Analysis
• Nature and Liberty
• Free Trade and Development
• Liberalism In Transition
• “positive” Liberalism
• Utilitarian Illiberalism
• Spencer and Laissez-faire
• Mill: Liberal Or Socialist?
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• Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation (act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code)

Fumbling Toward Truth

Donald T. Campbell

• Northwestern University

“Comment on ‘The Natural Selection Model of Conceptual Evolution.’” Philosophy of Science 44 (1977): 502–507.

Natural evolution may be the best model to described the intellectual process of scientific discovery and conceptual innovation. By contrast, another model posits an extreme rationalist “logic of discovery” which claims that intelligent solutions to problems must entail intelligent generation and a clairvoyant, unerring march to the truth. A better paradigm seems to be “fumbling in the dark” after the manner of biological evolution through natural selection. Poincaré and other classic narrators of the creative insight process confirm that we usually approach discoveries through intelligent errors and stumbling indirection. Problem solvers “naturally” generate a “wasteful” welter of idea variations; the selective retention of the best hypothesis proceeds through a groping process toward an “increasing fit” into the selective system.

Creative heuristics follow a natural-selectionist epistemology. The generating stage of discovery does not proceed by way of prescient, logically entailed truth but by “blind” variants, vague hunches, and conjectures; the editing, selecting stage of creativity does, however, employ logical consistency. Innovation involves the vital interplay of both “blind,” “subjective” hunches and rational, “objective” logic.