ABSTRACT
There is something to be said for suppressing all discussion of the philosophy of biology. Too much of it is perpetrated by philosophers who know no biology, or by biologists with no knowledge of philosophy. However, philosophy cannot be completely excluded from any book about evolution, since the logical status of the theory of natural selection is still a live issue, at least among people who are not evolutionary biologists. But whilst the intrinsic merit of philosophical disputations by biologists may be doubted, they do at least serve to tell us how the author conducts his research, and in particular how he constructs hypotheses and on what grounds he accepts or rejects them. The following paragraphs should be read in this spirit. They are not intended to define the one true scientific method, but only to describe the method I have myself used in dealing with evolutionary problems.
