SCIENCE AND SELECTION

In this paper I consider the view that scientific change is the result of a selection process which has the same structure as that which dri ves natural selection. I argue that there are important differences be tween organic evolution and scientific growth. First, natural selectio n is much more constrained than scientific change; for example it is h ard to populations of organisms to escape local maxima. Science progre sses; it may not even make sense to say that biological evolution is p rogressive. Second, natural selection depends for its power on the spe cifics of its domain, so I doubt that there is much point in seeing a selective regime in science as an instance of a more general family of selective regimes. Third, the replicator/interactor distinction fits scientific change much less well than biological evolution. But a fami ly of selective theories of science can be identified ranging from the very ambitious to the very modest. Though the very ambitious programs of evolutionary epistemology are in trouble, there is space for one w hich is not a trivial redescription of what everyone already knows, bu t which is sensitive to the peculiarities of its domain. That selectiv e theory explains important aspects of the community organization of s cience, an organization which is central to scientific progress.