BACK TO DARWIN AND POPPER - CRITICISM, MIGRATION OF PIECEMEAL CONCEPTUAL SCHEMES, AND THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE

Popper's thesis that the growth of knowledge lies in the emergence of problems out of criticism and takes place in an autonomous world of pr oducts of the human mind (his so-called world-3) raises two questions: (1) Why does criticism lead to new problems, and (2) Why can only a l imited number of tentative solutions arise at a given time? I propose the following answer: Criticism entails an overlooked evolutionary wor ld-3 mechanism, namely, the migration of piecemeal conceptual schemes from one research tradition to another. Popper bypassed the questions above because he relied very heavily on the selective power of critici sm.