Chris Buskes's The Genealogy of Knowledge provides a comprehensive and critical defense of evolutionary approaches to epistemology and philosophy of science. Buskes shows that, until recently, many philosophers had a keen interest in physics and mathematics, but they tended to neglect the findings and important implications of evolutionary biology.By trying to rectify this omission, the author convincingly demonstrates that neo-Darwinian theory is simply indispensable for a proper understanding of the various cognitive processes found in animals and man. He also shows that, from a biological point of view, we are forced to broaden our concept of knowledge: all instances of adaptive evolution are instances in which knowledge about the natural world has been gained. Finally, The Genealogy of Knowledge explores the many parallels between biological and scientific evolution. It is claimed that Darwin's scheme of explanation can be applied successfully to the epistemic domain, which means that scientific and methodological change can be understood as analogous to biological evolution.
