Theoreticians that defend a form of realism regarding natural kinds minimally entertain the belief that the world features divisions into kinds and that the natural kind concept is a useful tool for philosophy of science. The objective of this paper is to challenge these assumptions. First, we challenge realism toward natural kinds by showing that the main arguments for their existence, which rely on the epistemic success of natural kinds, are unsatisfactory. Second, we show that, whether they exist or not, (...) natural kinds are expendable when it comes to describing and analyzing scientific explanations accurately. (shrink)

This article examines the distinction between active matter and active materials, and it offers foundational remarks toward a system of classification for active materials. Active matter is typically identified as matter that exhibits two characteristic features: self-propelling parts, and coherent dynamical activity among the parts. These features are exhibited across a wide range of organic and inorganic materials, and they are jointly sufficient for classifying matter as active. Recently, the term “active materials” has entered scientific use as a complement, supplement, (...) and extension of “active matter.” At the same time, new work in the philosophy of science has considered the problem of how to classify the products of synthetic and laboratory processes, and the extent to which the aims of classifying natural kinds compare and contrasts with the aims of classifying these synthetic kinds. In this article, I apply those considerations to the problems of classifying and characterizing active materials. In doing so, I also argue for a conception of active materials’ coherent dynamical activity as multiscale, rather than emergent, and I discuss how the special non-equilibrium status of active materials factors in to classificatory concerns. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that ‘art’, though an open concept, is not undefinable. I propose a particular kind of definition, a disjunctive definition, which comprises extant theories of art. I co-opt arguments from the philosophy of science, likening the concept ‘art’ to the concept ‘species’, to argue that we ought to be theoretical pluralists about art. That is, there are a number of legitimate, perhaps incompatible, criteria for a theory of art. In this paper, I consider three: functionalist definitions, (...) procedural definitions, and an intentional-historical definition. The motivation for this pluralism comes from an analysis of practice, because the term is of apparent value to practitioners. However, a closer analysis of the concept reveals that, while disjunctive definitions help us to understand how we use certain terms, they lack ontological import. In sum, I attempt to glean lessons from the philosophy of science about the philosophy of art. If my analysis is correct, we ought to be eliminative pluralists about art as a concept. (shrink)

At the intersection of taxonomy and nomenclature lies the scientific practice of typification. This practice occurs in biology with the use of holotypes (type specimens), in geology with the use of stratotypes, and in metrology with the use of measurement prototypes. In this paper I develop the first general definition of a scientific type and outline a new philosophical theory of types inspired by Pierre Duhem. I use this general framework to resolve the necessity-contingency debate about type specimens in philosophy (...) of biology, to advance the debate over the myth of the absolute accuracy of standards in metrology, and to address the definition-correlation debate in geology. I conclude that just as there has been a productive synergy between philosophical accounts of natural kinds and scientific taxonomic practices, so too there is much to be gained from developing a deeper understanding of the practices and philosophy of scientific types. (shrink)

We undeniably live in an information age—as, indeed, did those who lived before us. After all, as the cultural historian Robert Darnton pointed out: ‘every age was an age of information, each in its own way’ (Darnton 2000: 1). Darnton was referring to the news media, but his insight surely also applies to the sciences. The practices of acquiring, storing, labeling, organizing, retrieving, mobilizing, and integrating data about the natural world has always been an enabling aspect of scientific work. Natural (...) history and its descendant discipline of biological taxonomy are prime examples of sciences dedicated to creating and managing systems of ordering data. In some sense, the idea of biological taxonomy as an information science is commonplace. Perhaps it is because of its self-evidence that the information science perspective on taxonomy has not been a major theme in the history and philosophy of science. The botanist Vernon Heywood once pointed out that historians of biology, in their ‘preoccupation with the development of the sciences of botany and zoology… [have] diverted attention from the role of taxonomy as an information science’ (Heywood 1985: 11). More specifically, he argued that historians had failed to appreciate how principles and practices that can be traced to Linnaeus constituted ‘a change in the nature of taxonomy from a local or limited folk communication system and later a codified folk taxonomy to a formal system of information science [that] marked a watershed in the history of biology’ (ibid.). A similar observation could be made about twentieth-century philosophy of biology, which mostly skipped over practical and epistemic questions about information management in taxonomy. The taxonomic themes that featured in the emerging philosophy of biology literature in the second half of the twentieth century were predominantly metaphysical in orientation. This is illustrated by what has become known as the ‘essentialism story’: an account about the essentialist nature of pre- Darwinian taxonomy that used to be accepted by many historians and philosophers, and which stimulated efforts to document and interpret shifts in the metaphysical understanding of species and (natural) classification (Richards 2010; Winsor 2003; Wilkins 2009). Although contemporary debates in the philosophy of taxonomy have moved on, much discussion continues to focus on conceptual and metaphysical issues surrounding the nature of species and the principles of classification. Discussions centring on whether species are individuals, classes, or kinds have sprung up as predictably as perennials. Raucous debates have arisen even with the aim of accommodating the diversity of views: is monism, pluralism, or eliminativism about the species category the best position to take? In addition to these, our disciplines continue to interrogate what is the nature of these different approaches to classification: are they representational or inferential roles of different approaches to classification (evolutionary taxonomy, phenetics, phylogenetic systematics)? While there is still much to learn from these discussions—in which we both actively participate—our aim with this topical collection has been to seek different entrypoints and address underexposed themes in the history and philosophy of taxonomy. We believe that approaching taxonomy as an information science prompts new questions and can open up new philosophical vistas worth exploring. A twenty-first century information science turn in the history and philosophy of taxonomy is already underway. In scientific practice and in daily life it is hard to escape the imaginaries of Big Data and the constant threats of being ‘flooded with data’. In the life sciences, these developments are often associated with the socalled bioinformatics crisis that can hopefully be contained by a new, interdisciplinary breed of bioinformaticians. These new concepts, narratives, and developments surrounding the centrality of data and information systems in the biological and biomedical sciences have raised important philosophical questions about their challenges and implications. But historical perspectives are just as necessary to judge what makes our information age different from those that preceded us. Indeed, as the British zoologist Charles Godfray has often pointed out, the piles of data that are being generated in contemporary systematic biology have led to a second bioinformatics crisis, the first being the one that confronted Linnaeus in the mid-18th century (Godfray 2007). Although our aim is to clear a path for new discussions of taxonomy from an information science-informed point of view, we continue where others in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science have already trod. We believe that an appreciation of biological taxonomy as an information science raises many questions about the philosophical, theoretical, material, and practical aspects of the use and revision of biological nomenclatures in different local and global communities of scientists and citizen scientists. In particular, conceiving of taxonomy as an information science directs attention to the temporalities of managing an accumulating data about classified entities that are themselves subject to revision, to the means by which revision is accomplished, and to the semantic, material, and collaborative contexts that mediate the execution of revisions. (shrink)

There is a perennial philosophical dream of a certain natural order for the natural kinds. The name of this dream is ‘the hierarchy requirement’. According to this postulate, proper natural kinds form a taxonomy which is both unique and traditional. Here I demonstrate that complex scientific objects exist: objects which generate different systems of scientific classification, produce myriad legitimate alternatives amongst the nonetheless still natural kinds, and make the hierarchical dream impossible to realize, except at absurdly great cost. Philosophical hopes (...) for a certain order in nature cannot be fulfilled. Natural kinds crosscut one another, ubiquitously so, and this crosscutting spells the end of the hierarchical dream. (shrink)

The account of natural kinds as stable property clusters is premised on the possibility of separating the epistemic value of natural kinds from their underlying metaphysics. On that account, the co-instantiation of any sub-cluster of the properties associated with a given natural kind raises the probability of the co-instantiation of the rest, and this clustering of property instantiation is invariant under all relevant counterfactual perturbations. We argue that it is not possible to evaluate the stability of a cluster of properties (...) without taking stock of the metaphysical picture used to account for that stability. Thus, even on the stable property cluster account, the epistemic value of natural kinds remains partly grounded in their metaphysical status. (shrink)

A standard requirement on natural kinds is that they be mind independent. However, many kinds in the human and social sciences, even the natural sciences, depend on human thought. This article suggests that the mind independence requirement on natural kinds be replaced with the requirement that natural kind classifications be defeasible. The defeasibility requirement does not require that natural kinds be mind independent, so it does not exclude mind dependent scientific kinds from being natural kinds. Furthermore, the defeasibility requirement captures (...) the idea that natural kind classifications are tools for investigating the empirical world. (shrink)

This paper makes a distinction between ahistorical causal-functional kinds and historical kinds, which include both type- and token-historical kinds, some of which are “copied kinds.” After showing how these distinctions play out in various social sciences, a number of reasons are put forward for the historical individuation of some social kinds. As in the natural sciences, historical individuation in the social sciences can enable us to infer common causes, explain synchronic causal properties, and discover exceptions to causal regularities, among other (...) epistemic aims. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis aims to uncover the basic criteria of concepts that underwrite categorizing members via the method of cases. However, conceptual analysis has not been very successful and experimental philosophy has increasingly detailed this lack of success. This essay reviews Thinking Off Your Feet: How Empirical Psychology Vindicates Armchair Philosophy by Michael Strevens, which attempts a novel defence of conceptual analysis. It is a strategic intervention that seems to preserve a relatively traditional picture of philosophical inquiry. I concentrate on several (...) assumptions in this intervention that might be questioned and conclude there are good reasons to continue an interrogation of how we understand the philosophical enterprise. Ideally, this might encourage us to rebuild our picture of what philosophy is. (shrink)

Recent rival attempts in the philosophy of science to put forward a general theory of the properties that all (and only) natural kinds across the sciences possess may have proven to be futile. Instead, I develop a general methodological framework for how to philosophically study kinds. Any kind has to be investigated and articulated together with the human aims that motivate referring to this kind, where different kinds in the same scientific domain can answer to different concrete aims. My core (...) contention is that non-epistemic aims, including environmental, ethical, and political aims, matter as well. This is defended and illustrated based on several examples of kinds, with particular attention to the role of social-political aims: species, race, gender, as well as personality disorders and oppositional defiant disorder as psychiatric kinds. Such non-epistemic aims and values need not always be those personally favoured by scientists, but may have to reflect values that matter to relevant societal stakeholders. Despite the general agenda to study ‘kinds,’ I argue that philosophers should stop using the term ‘natural kinds,’ as this label obscures the relevance of humans interests and the way in which many kinds are based on contingent social processes subject to human responsibility. (shrink)

There is long-standing conflict between genealogical and developmental accounts of homology. This paper provides a general framework that shows that these accounts are compatible and clarifies precisely how they are related. According to this framework, understanding homology requires both an abstract genealogical account that unifies the application of the term to all types of characters used in phylogenetic systematics and locally enriched accounts that apply only to specific types of characters. The genealogical account serves this unifying role by relying on (...) abstract notions of ‘descent’ and ‘character’. As a result, it takes for granted the existence of such characters. This requires theoretical justification that is provided by enriched accounts, which incorporate the details by which characters are inherited. These enriched accounts apply to limited domains, providing the needed theoretical justification for recognizing characters within that domain. Though connected to the genealogical account of homology in this way, enriched accounts include phenomena that fall outside the scope of the genealogical account. They therefore overlap, but are not nested within, the genealogical account. Developmental accounts of homology are to be understood as enriched accounts of body part homology. Once they are seen in this light, the conflict with the genealogical account vanishes. It is only by understanding the fine conceptual structure undergirding the many uses of the term ‘homology’ that we can understand how these uses hang together. (shrink)

This paper accounts for broad definitions of memory, which extend to paradigmatic memory phenomena, like episodic memory in humans, and phenomena in worms and sea snails. These definitions may seem too broad, suggesting that they extend to phenomena that don’t count as memory or illustrate that memory is not a natural kind. However, these responses fail to consider a definition as a hypothesis. As opposed to construing definitions as expressing memory’s properties, a definition as a hypothesis is the basis to (...) test inferences about phenomena. A definition as a hypothesis is valuable when the “kinding” of phenomena is ongoing. (shrink)

Muhammad Ali Khalidi contends that because cognitive science casts a wider net than neuroscience in searching for the causes of cognition, it is in the superior position to discover “real” cognitive kinds. I argue that while Khalidi identifies appropriate norms for individuating cognitive kinds, these norms ground his characterization of taxonomic practices in cognitive science, rather than the other way around. If we instead treat Khalidi's norms not as descriptively accurate characterizations of taxonomic practices in cognitive science, but as a (...) set of best practices for kinding cognition, is cognitive science in and neuroscience definitively out of the cognitive kinding game? (shrink)

The notion of natural kinds has been widely criticized in philosophy of science but also appears indispensable for philosophical engagement with classificatory practices. Rather than addressing this tension through a new definition of “natural kind”, this article suggests materiality as a substitute for naturalness in philosophical debates about scientific classification. It is argued that a theory of material kinds provides an alternative and more inclusive entry point for analyzing classificatory practices, which is specified through an account of “restricted malleability” of (...) materiality and further analyzed as (1) gradual, (2) multi-dimensional, (3) scalable, (4) interactive, and (5) purpose sensitive. (shrink)

Recent philosophical work on biological homology has generally treated its conceptual fragmentation as a problem to be solved by new accounts that either unify disparate approaches to homology or specify sharp constraints on its meaning. I show that several proposed solutions either misunderstand or ignore central features of comparative biological research, despite attempts to capture scientific practice. I conclude that the problem is incorrectly framed and that disagreements about homology may be epistemically fruitful. Empirically tractable debates are more likely to (...) occur among biologists who share theoretical perspectives on homology. Philosophers should consider homology not merely as a generator of inductive generalizations but also as a scaffold for meaningful empirical comparisons. (shrink)

The label realist in the debate about natural kinds can imply different things. Many authors in this debate subscribe to views that are in some way realist, but without making clear whether the realism in question specifically attaches to kind categories or something else. The traditional understanding of realism about natural kinds is stated in terms of the mind-independence criterion. However, a recent tendency in the debate is to reject this understanding on the ground of its incompatibility with naturalistic approaches (...) to natural kinds. The aim of this paper is to disentangle different meanings attached to the term realism about natural kinds and examine arguments for rejecting the traditional mind-independence framing of the debate. I recommend the reestablishment of mind-independent realism as a legitimate contender for naturalist approaches to natural kinds by indicating that mind-independent realists have at their disposal all the resources to subscribe to such an approach. I proceed by showing how keeping the traditional distinction between realist and antirealist views in terms of mind-independence allows us to keep track of important distinctions between different accounts of natural kinds which are otherwise blurred. Then I examine the arguments against this traditional framing and conclude that they either (1) rest on a conflation between mind-independence of kinds versus entities belonging to kinds, or (2) unjustifiably presuppose that mind-independent realists do not have resources to uphold a naturalistic view of natural kinds. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino’s mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In (...) so doing, this paper will call attention to the visual and quantitative language of early twentieth-century systematics. My analysis will therefore contribute to a prehistory of the statistical frame of mind in biology, a study which has yet to be written in full. Second, my work highlights the productive intertwinement between biological practices and philosophical frameworks at the turn of the nineteenth century. Deeply rooted in Kantian bio-philosophy, several biologists sought to find rules in order to apply ordering principles to chaotic taxonomic information. This implies the necessity to investigate the neglected role of Kantian and Romantic bio-philosophy in the unfolding of twentieth-century biology. (shrink)