ABSTRACT
If one combines evolutionary epistemology with model-dependent realism one comes to a view that science is about providing explanations of phenomena (realism), but such explanations are always mediated by our models and observations and thus cannot claim to be objectively and perpetually true (model dependency). Scientific explanations are formulated as models or theories which have deductive implications, some of which are observable and some are not (a model with no observable deductive implications is not scientific). Observable implications can then be used to make testable predictions. If those predictions are more congruent with empirical observation versus competing explanations, then the theory or model is ‘the best explanation for now’ (empirical adequacy), if it is falsified then it is thrown out (Popperian selection). Science is thus an evolutionary epistemological system of competing explanations, with the primary selection force being Popperian falsifiability (although, as many critics of Popper have argued, in real science falsifiability is rarely black and white and thus theory selection is often a complex mix of criteria – some empirically based and some more sociological, e.g. the power of authority figures in a field). The evolutionary process of competing explanations over time leads to the paradigmatic eras described by Kuhn (1962).
