Epistemology and Methodology. Campbell writes about these two topics often and well, dating back to 1959. Though our "ratio analysis" shows his epistemological work to be mostly a late career activity, his interest in multimethod triangulation and quasi-experiments dominates his mid career attention. Thus, his methodological ideas have matured into stability by the time of his retirement whereas the epistemological writing starts slowly but keeps growing throughout his life. Quite possibly Campbell’s long time interest in bench-science measurement and experiments keeps objectivism at the forefront as he searches for an improved epistemology. Starting in 1959, his early epistemology focuses on BVSR and the evolution of knowledge. Then, in 1969 we see the first evidence of his "corrigible, hypothetical, realism." Attention to cultural relativism emerges in 1972, with multilevel analysis beginning in 1974. His move into semantic relativism and hermeneutics shows up by 1986 (models of language) and 1991 (coherence theory and hermeneutics). As noted earlier, Campbellian realism includes scientific realism, selectionist epistemology, and hermeneutics. Over the years Campbell slowly evolves toward an objective epistemology that also attends to the concerns of interpretists and social constructionists and to the dynamics of how sciences change over time.

Evans traces Campbell's influence on methodologies in organization science by exploring the influence of two well-known bodies of work—construct validity and quasi experimentation—and one less familiar set of ideas: the analysis of case studies.

Hendrickx keys in on Campbell’s eventual addition of hermeneutics to his development of selectionist evolutionary epistemology. Using Campbell’s (1994) essay on individual versus group selection, she shows that a hermeneutic reading of the text indicates that Campbell’s fundamental concern centers not on whether "groups are real" but rather on whether his use of BVSR necessarily implies the selection and retention of selfish individuals at the expense of socio-cultural (group) solidarity and altruism.

McKelvey's examination of Campbell's intense interests in scientific realism and evolutionary epistemology reveals a basis—Campbellian realism—for an objective organization science that denies neither the epistemological dynamics of historical relativists nor the sociology of knowledge developed by interpretists and social constructionists, and demonstrates that the current 'paradigm war' between organizational positivists and relativists is philosophically uninformed and dysfunctional.