Robustness: Material, and Inferential, in the Natural and Human Sciences

Abstract

I review the scientific situation with the emergence of population biology that led Richard Levins to introduce the idea of looking for robust theorems, and the influences that lead Donald Campbell to introduce “triangulation”. My review tied these two notions together, and looked for other convergent methodologies that showed some of the same characteristics I baptized as “robustness analysis”. I review the main types, and then turn to a further characterization of material robustness, which has become the primary focus of studies in biology and elsewhere in the last decade. I discuss one key source of this robustness—sexual recombination—and then close with some remarks on robustness, complexity, fragility, and generative entrenchment.