In this essay, I examine the usage of the term “just-so story.” I attempt to show that just-so storytelling can be seen as an epistemic concept that, in various ways, tackles the epistemological and methodological problems relating to evolutionary explanations qua historical/narrative explanations. I identify two main, yet mutually exclusive, strategies of employing the concept of a just-so story: a negative strategy and a positive strategy. Subsequently, I argue that these strategies do not satisfactorily capture the core of the “original” meaning advanced by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin at the end of the 1970s. I revisit the foundation(s) of their anti-adaptationist critique in order to reframe it as a critique of distinctive methodological manners and epistemic maxims related to historical inquiry. Last but not least, I suggest that contemporary evolutionary thinkers have two conceptually different options: they can either adhere to the “original” meaning of the term “just-so story” or accept that “just-so story” is a term equivalent to “implausible narrative explanation.”

在本文中，我研究了“只是这样的故事”一词的用法。我试图表明，这样的讲故事可以被看作是一种认识论概念，它以各种方式解决了与进化解释或历史/叙述解释有关的认识论和方法论问题。我确定了采用一般故事概念的两种主要但相互排斥的策略：否定策略和积极策略。随后，我认为这些策略不能令人满意地抓住1970年代末斯蒂芬·杰伊·古尔德（Stephen Jay Gould）和理查德·勒沃廷（Richard Lewontin）提出的“原始”含义的核心。我重新审视了他们的反适应主义批评的基础，以便将其重构为对与历史探究有关的独特方法论方法和认识论准则的批评。最后但并非最不重要的，