Classifying is a fundamental operation in the acquisition of knowledge. Taxonomic theory can help students of cognition, evolutionary psychology, ethology, anatomy, and sociobiology to avoid serious mistakes, both practical and theoretical. More positively, it helps in generating hypotheses useful to a wide range of disciplines. Composite wholes, such as species and societies, are “individuals” in the logical sense, and should not be treated as if they were classes. A group of analogous features is a natural kind, but a group of (...) homologous features is not. Imposing hypotheses justified only on the basis of nominalist, realist, phenomenalist, or conceptualist metaphysics upon the neurophysiology of organisms or upon the causes of behavior exemplifies the “psychologist's fallacy” of William James. Levels should be distinguished from their members and from classes of levels, and the ontological status of entities ranked at levels should be made clear. It is important not to confuse such categories as substance and process with one another. Several genetical terms, such as “gene” and chromosome,” are even more equivocal than has been realized. Discussions about units of selection, behavior, and thinking suffer from the ambiguity of a “unit of” an entity. An important source of misunderstanding about natural selection is the habit of treating it as an “agent”: in an important sense, natural selection does not “act” at all. (shrink)

The Development of Modern Taxonomy Taxonomy has a long history, going back to the ancient Greeks and to forerunners even less sophisticated in systematics. Our interest here is centered on modern taxonomy itself, and we shall largely ...

Traditionally, species have been treated as classes. In fact they may be considered individuals. The logical term “individual” has been confused with a biological synonym for “organism.” If species are individuals, then: 1) their names are proper, 2) there cannot be instances of them, 3) they do not have defining properties, 4) their constituent organisms are parts, not members. “ Species " may be defined as the most extensive units in the natural economy such that reproductive competition occurs among their (...) parts. Species are to evolutionary theory as firms are to economic theory: this analogy resolves many issues, such as the problems of “reality” and the ontological status of nomenclatorial types. (shrink)

I defend a view of the species category, pluralistic realism, which is designed to do justice to the insights of many different groups of systematists. After arguing that species are sets and not individuals, I proceed to outline briefly some defects of the biological species concept. I draw the general moral that similar shortcomings arise for other popular views of the nature of species. These shortcomings arise because the legitimate interests of biology are diverse, and these diverse interests are reflected (...) in different legitimate approaches to the classification of organisms. In the final section, I show briefly how the pluralistic approach can help to illuminate some areas of biological and philosophical dispute. (shrink)

Biological species have been treated traditionally as spatiotemporally unrestricted classes. If they are to perform the function which they do in the evolutionary process, they must be spatiotemporally localized individuals, historical entities. Reinterpreting biological species as historical entities solves several important anomalies in biology, in philosophy of biology, and within philosophy itself. It also has important implications for any attempt to present an "evolutionary" analysis of science and for sciences such as anthropology which are devoted to the study of single (...) species. (shrink)

The species concept is one of the oldest and most fundamental in biology. And yet it is almost universally conceded that no satisfactory definition of what constitutes a species has ever been proposed. The present article is devoted to an attempt to review the status of the problem from a methodological point of view. Since the species is one of the many taxonomic categories, the question of the nature of these categories in general needs to be entered into.

Oaks exemplify problems with the reproductive species concept which motivate a reconsideration of the use and nature of species. Ecology is important in the reconsideration. The species level is usually overemphasized in evolutionary thought; selection acts on phenotypes and any mutualistic units. Standard definitions tend to inhibit free conceptual progress. Multispecies, sets of broadly sympatric species that exchange genes, may occur among animals as well as plants and may conceivably bridge kingdoms. This phenomenon can be adaptively important. There may be (...) taxa without species. The degree of modality of adaptive zones can be investigated empirically. (shrink)

I defend a view of the species category, pluralistic realism, which is designed to do justice to the insights of many different groups of systematists. After arguing that species are sets and not individuals, I proceed to outline briefly some defects of the biological species concept. I draw the general moral that similar shortcomings arise for other popular views of the nature of species. These shortcomings arise because the legitimate interests of biology are diverse, and these diverse interests are reflected (...) in different legitimate approaches to the classification of organisms. In the final section, I show briefly how the pluralistic approach can help to illuminate some areas of biological and philosophical dispute. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive guide to the conceptual methodological, and epistemological problems of biology, and treats in depth the major developments in molecular biology and evolutionary theory that have transformed both biology and its philosophy in recent decades. At the same time the work is a sustained argument for a particular philosophy of biology that unifies disparate issues and offers a framework for expectations about the future directions of the life sciences. The argument explores differences between autonomist and anti-autonomist (...) views of biology. The result is a vindication of reductionism, but one that is unexpectedly hollow. For it leaves the exponents of the autonomy of biology from physical science with as much as their view of biology really requires - and rather more than the reductionist might comfortably concede. Professor Rosenberg shows how the problems of the philosophy of biology are interconnected and how their solutions are interdependent, However, this book focuses more on the direct concerns of biologists, rather than the traditional agenda of philosophers' problems about biology. This departure from earlier books on the subject results both in greater understanding and relevance of the philosophy of science to biology as a whole. (shrink)

Geographic coincidence of animal and plant distributions to form recognizable patterns suggests that the separate components of the patterns are historically connected with each other and with geographic history. To seek evidence of these historical connections, cladograms of geographic areas, representing sequences of disruptive geologic, climatic, or geographic events, may be compared with biological cladograms, representing sequences of allopatric speciation events in relation to those geographic areas. Such comparisons, when they meet the minimum requirements of being among dichotomized threetaxon cladograms, (...) can resolve similar or dissimilar historical factors; two-taxon statements do not distinguish between groups with different histories. Congruence of biological and geological area-cladograms at a high confidence level (such as congruence of a five-taxon cladogram or four three-taxon cladograms with a geological cladogram, where the confidence level can be shown in cladistic theory to be 99%) means that specified events of paleogeography can be adopted as an explanation of the biological patterns. In such a cause and effect relationship, where the earth and its life are assumed to have evolved together, paleogeography is taken by logical necessity to be the independent variable and biological history, the dependent variable. Drawing a mathematical simile, the biological cladogram y (dependent variable), is a function of the geological cladogram x (independent variable), as in a simple regression of effect y on cause x where we are given no free choice as to which is the independent variable. Such a view implies that any specified sequence in earth history must coincide with some discoverable biological patterns; it does not imply a necessary converse that each biological pattern must coincide with some discoverable paleogeographic pattern, because some biological distributions might have resulted from stochastic processes (chance dispersal). Determining that all discoverable biological patterns conflict with a given corroborated or observed sequence of geologic, climatic, or geographic change (i.e., that y is not a function of x), in theory, therefore should falsify vicariance biogeography. Because dispersal biogeography presupposes stochastic processes, and any failure to meet the expectation of a postulated dispersal is explained by an additional dispersal, dispersal biogeography is immune to falsification. Without resort to paleontology or earth history, whether a given historical relationship implied by congruence of biological area-cladograms is the result of dispersal or vicariance can also be thought of in terms which minimize the number of necessary assumptions: did the sedentary organisms disperse with the vagile ones or did the vagile organisms vicariate with the sedentary ones? Cladistic congruence of a group of sedentary organisms with a group of vagile ones rejects dispersal for both. Hence, distributions of sedentary organisms have the potential to falsify dispersal theories as applied to vagile organisms, but distributions of vagile organisms cannot falsify vicariance theories as applied to sedentary ones. The problems that arise in various kinds of historical explanation are exemplified by several specific distributions of fishes and other organisms in North and Middle America and in the larger context of Pangaean history, and are discussed in relation to current species concepts. (shrink)

Compares classic and contemporary theories of genetics and evolution and explores the role of teleological thought in biology.

The fact that the names of biological species refer independently of identifying descriptions does not support the view of Ghiselin and Hull that species are individuals. Species may be regarded as natural kinds whose members share an essence which distinguishes them from the members of other species and accounts for the fact that they are reproductively isolated from the members of other species. Because evolutionary theory requires that species be spatiotemporally localized their names cannot occur in scientific laws. If natural (...) kind status is denied to species on this ground, it must also be denied to most classes of concrete entities which are now accorded such status. (shrink)

A brilliant account of the life of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Popper also explains some of the central ideas in his work, making this ideal reading for anyone coming to his life and work for the first time.