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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Advance Access originally published online on February 1, 2006
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2006 57(1):121-144; doi:10.1093/bjps/axi158
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© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Darwin's Pangenesis and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives1

P. Kyle Stanford

Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of California Irvine, 5100 Social Science Plaza Irvine, CA 92697-5100 USA stanford{at}uci.edu

In earlier work I have argued that the most substantial threat to scientific realism arises from the problem of unconceived alternatives: the repeated failure of past scientists and scientific communities to conceive of alternatives to extant scientific theories, even when such alternatives were both (1) well confirmed by the evidence available at the time and (2) sufficiently scientifically serious as to be later embraced by actual scientific communities. In this paper I explore Charles Darwin's development and defense of his ‘pangenesis’ theory of inheritance and conclude that this particular historical example offers impressive support for the challenge posed to realism by this problem of unconceived alternatives.

  1. Introduction
  2. Darwin and pangenesis: The search for the material basis of generation and heredity
  3. A crucial unconceived alternative: common-cause mechanisms of inheritance
  4. Galton and common-cause inheritance
  5. Conclusion


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