"For Kuhn, scientific development is neither cumulative nor teleological: science is not moving towards the goal of a theory of everything. His favoured analogy is with biological evolution by natural selection. Organisms develop under selective pressures from the environment, but development, though tending to an increase in complexity and differentiation, has no fixed goal. Moreover, the selective environments that determine which organisms survive and which die off themselves change and are partially constituted by the organisms’ own activities. Biological evolution is not moving towards an ideal organism, and scientific evolution is not moving towards the Truth. Both processes are pushed from behind, not pulled from the front."
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Peter Lipton
(October 9, 1954 – November 25, 2007) was an American philosopher, and the Hans Rausing Professor and Head of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, and a fellow of King's College.
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