THE EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

The first condition necessary for an adequate explanation of individual behavior is an account of motivation that was given in the preceding chapter. The second necessary hypothesis refers to the cognitive content of the individual brain. Traditionally, philosophers have devoted much ingenuity to understanding how people perceive, but it was the Lorenz (1941) interpretation of the a priori categories of Kant that caused a radical change in epistemology and laid the foundation stone of evolutionary epistemology. For Lorenz, our a priori categories are nothing more than a natural vessel that has been formed, like our organs, in the process of biological evolution, and these categories have remained with us because they secure our existence and our adaptation to the environment. The main contention of Lorenz was, hence, that human categories of thought have not existed a priori, but phylogenetically a posteriori and they are to be viewed as successful, species-specific information systems. The hypothesis of Lorenz is thus that a distinction between phylogenetic and ontogenetic learning potential must be drawn. Phylogenetic learning is species specific, and sets the framework of possibilities within which every member of the species can acquire his learning history, that is, ontogenetic knowledge.

Lorenz's distinction between phylogenetic and ontogenetic knowledge was much more than another interpretation of Kant's a priori categories. It signaled a new era in the theory of knowledge: the era of evolutionary epistemology.