Georg Simmel and naturalist interactivist epistemology of science

• Simmel = s forgotten 1895 paper develops a radical, relevant position.
• Concepts are species-specific, truth is tied to practical success.
• Simmel shares key commitments with recent interactivist-constructivism bio-cognition.
• His position can be given an integrated, three-fold bio-cognitive elaboration.
• Fields are interactivism, unified evolutionary epistemology, learnable normativity.

In 1895 sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel published a paper: ‘On a connection of selection theory to epistemology’. It was focussed on the question of how behavioural success and the evolution of the cognitive capacities that underlie it are to be related to knowing and truth. Subsequently, Simmel’s ideas were largely lost, but recently (2002) an English translation was published by Coleman in this journal. While Coleman’s contextual remarks are solely concerned with a preceding evolutionary epistemology, it will be argued here that Simmel pursues a more unorthodox, more radically biologically based and pragmatist, approach to epistemology in which the presumption of a wholly interests-independent truth is abandoned, concepts are accepted as species-specific and truth tied intimately to practical success. Moreover, Simmel’s position, shorn of one too-radical commitment, shares its key commitments with the recently developed interactivist–constructivist framework for understanding biological cognition and naturalistic epistemology. There Simmel’s position can be given a natural, integrated, three-fold elaboration in interactivist re-analysis, unified evolutionary epistemology and learnable normativity.