Abstract

I address David Hull's theses about the process of science from the perspective of an evolutionary biologist, particularly emphasizing phylogenetic systematics, an area that has figured prominently in Hull's work as a source of both sociological data and metatheory. The goal is to carefully explore analogies and disanalogies between scientific process and comparative biology. There do seem to be remarkable analogies, indeed these lead to important insights that might not otherwise have been made, yet some possible analogies present novel problems: Are "memes" like genes or like traits? What is the nature of replication in science? It is argued that the primary need is for some rigorously worked-out case studies