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I find Peter's categories of 'methodology of economics', 'intellectual 
history of science' and 'history of thought as contemporary theory', and 
his implication that there is some cut-and-dried distinction to be made 
between such 'logical categories' to be mostly rubbish -- the best work in 
the advance of thinking in Darwinian biology can't be 'cut-at-the-joints' 
in such clear categories -- e.g., see the work of Ghiselin, Mayr, and Hull. 
All at once, in one complex structure, Ghiselin, Mayr, and Hull have 
transformed our understanding of the logical status and explanatory 
strategy 
of Darwinian biology, its history, and how it should be understood -- while 
advocating this change, and attacking rival pictures, i.e. while acting as 
'ideological advocates'.  You can't isolate these endeavors as stand-alone 
domains of inquiry, they are inextricably part of a whole. 
 
I find so much of what passes to be 'methodology', 'history', or 
'contemporary theory' to be both blind and sterile for the very reason 
that folks attempt to pretend that these are isolated endeavors.  My 
criticism here goes beyond June Flanders' familiar point that contemporary 
theorists waste a tremendous amount of time 're-inventing the wheel' 
every generation.  The point can perhaps best be illustrated by pointing 
out how efforts to understand and recast a set of problems implicates 
all at once the logic and explanatory strategy of an endeavor, its 
historical 
understanding, and contemporary answers and constructions.  It is only a 
myth to believe that this only goes on in Darwinian biology, and not in 
other areas, such as physics, political theory, the problem of 
communication, 
etc. 
 
Now it is true that, e.g., Ghiselin and Mayr, put themselves at greater 
risk because they so clearly advance theses and findings that challenge the 
standard accounts of folks who wish to avoid being held to standards that 
engage more than what they hope can be the self-contained world of 'method' 
or 'history' or 'contemporary theory'.  For example, someone who in the 
past has 
attempted something like Ghiselin and Mayr might have produced work that 
does 
not stand-up or contribute to the conversation by the lights of competent 
work on issues of logical status, contemporary theory, or history of ideas. 
In the light of criticism, Ghiselin and Mayr have continued to advance in 
the same inclusive direction, only doing this better.  Others retreat and 
say 
they no longer wish to be held to the standards of some supposed 
independent 
domain of 'method', or 'theory', or 'history'.  But what we find is that 
these folks continue to bend to the wholist results and contributions of 
folks 
like Ghiselin and Mayr -- who lead the way in important dimensions for all 
of 
those seeking protection in 'independent domains'. 
 
Greg Ransom 
Dept. of Philosophy 
UC-Riverside 
[log in to unmask] 
http://members.aol.com/gregransom/ransom.htm 
 
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