Evolutionary epistemology

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Evolutionary biology
Darwin's finches by John Gould
Index Introduction Main Outline Glossary Evidence History
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Natural history Origin of life Common descent History of life Timeline of evolution Human evolution Recent human evolution Phylogeny Biodiversity Biogeography Classification Evolutionary taxonomy Cladistics Transitional fossil Extinction event
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Evolutionary epistemology refers to three distinct topics: (1) the biological evolution of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans, (2) a theory that knowledge itself evolves by natural selection, and (3) the study of the historical discovery of new abstract entities such as abstract number or abstract value that necessarily precede the individual acquisition and usage of such abstractions. As a branch of inquiry in epistemology, evolutionary epistemology lies at the crossroads of philosophy and evolutionary biology.^[1]