The essentialism story is a version of the history of biological classification that was fabricated between 1953 and 1968 by Ernst Mayr, who combined contributions from Arthur Cain and David Hull with his own grudge against Plato. It portrays pre-Darwinian taxonomists as caught in the grip of an ancient philosophy called essentialism, from which they were not released until Charles Darwin's 1859 Origin of Species. Mayr's motive was to promote the Modern Synthesis in opposition to the typology of idealist morphologists; (...) demonizing Plato served this end. Arthur Cain's picture of Linnaeus as a follower of 'Aristotelian' (scholastic) logic was woven into the story, along with David Hull's application of Karl Popper's term, 'essentialism', which Mayr accepted in 1968 as a synonym for what he had called 'typological thinking'. Although Mayr also pointed out the importance of empiricism in the history of taxonomy, the essentialism story still dominates the secondary literature. The history of the first telling of the essentialism story exposes its scant basis in fact. (shrink)

The article defends the doctrine that Linnaean taxa, including species, have essences that are, at least partly, underlying intrinsic, mostly genetic, properties. The consensus among philosophers of biology is that such essentialism is deeply wrong, indeed incompatible with Darwinism. I argue that biological generalizations about the morphology, physiology, and behavior of species require structural explanations that must advert to these essential properties. The objection that, according to current “species concepts,” species are relational is rejected. These concepts are primarily concerned with (...) what it is for a kind to be a species and throw little light on the essentialist issue of what it is for an organism to be a member of a particular kind. Finally, the article argues that this essentialism can accommodate features of Darwinism associated with variation and change. (shrink)

Biologists and philosophers of biology typically regard essentialism about speciesas incompatible with modern Darwinian theory. Analytic metaphysicians such asKripke, Putnam and Wiggins, on the other hand, believe that their essentialist thesesare applicable to biological kinds. I explore this tension. I show that standard anti-essentialist considerations only show that species do not have intrinsic essential properties. I argue that while Putnam and Kripke do make assumptions that contradict received biological opinion, their model of natural kinds, suitably modified, is partially applicable to (...) biological species. However, Wiggins'' thesis that organisms belong essentially to their species is untenable, given modern species concepts. I suggest that Putnam''s, Kripke''s and Wiggins'' errors stem from adopting an account of the point of scientific classification which implies that relationally-defined kinds are likely to be of little value, an account which is inapplicable to biology. (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)

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.

Emphasis on autonomy of texts presupposes that there are perennial concepts. But researchers' expectations may turn history into mythology of ideas; researchers forget that an agent cannot be described as doing something he could not understand as a description, and that thinking may be inconsistent. They will never uncover voluntary oblique strategies and by treating ideas as units will confuse sentences with statements. On the other hand, a contextual approach to the meaning of texts dismisses ideas as unimportant effects. Neither (...) method shows how what was said was meant is crucial for understanding. There are no perennial problems; philosophers of different times do not speak directly to us. But history of ideas helps us recognize the contingency of many of our beliefs. (shrink)

They are correct that punctuated equilibria apply to sexually reproducing organisms and that morphological evolutionary change is regarded as largely (if not exclusively) correlated with speciation events. However, they err in suggesting that we attribute stasis strictly to "developmental constraints," which represent only one of a set of possible mechanisms that we have suggested for the causes of stasis. Others include habitat tracking and the internal structure of species themselves [for example, (2)].

Numerous concepts exist for biological species. This diversity of ideas derives from a number of sources ranging from investigative study of particular taxa and character sets to philosophical aptitude and world view to operationalism and nomenclatorial rules. While usually viewed as counterproductive, in reality these varied concepts can greatly enhance our efforts to discover and understand biological diversity. Moreover, this continued "turf war" and dilemma over species can be resolved if the various concepts are viewed in a hierarchical system and (...) each evaluated for its inherent level of consilience. Under this paradigm a theoretically appropriate, highly consilient concept of species capable of colligating the abundant types of species diversity offers the best guidance for developing and employing secondary operational concepts for identifying diversity. Of all the concepts currently recognized, only the non-operational Evolutionary Species Concept corresponds to the requisite parameters and, therefore, should serve as the theoretical concept appropriate for the category Species. As operational concepts, the remaining ideas have been incompatible with one another in their ability to encompass species diversity because each has restrictive criteria as to what qualifies as a species. However, the operational concepts can complement one another and do serve a vital role under the Evolutionary Species Concept as fundamental tools necessary for discovering diversity compatible with the primary theoretical concept. Thus, the proposed hierarchical system of primary and secondary concepts promises both the most productive framework for mutual respect for varied concepts and the most efficient and effective means for revealing species diversity. (shrink)

The concept of individuality as applied to species, an important advance in the philosophy of evolutionary biology, is nevertheless in need of refinement. Four important subparts of this concept must be recognized: spatial boundaries, temporal boundaries, integration, and cohesion. Not all species necessarily meet all of these. Two very different types of pluralism have been advocated with respect to species, only one of which is satisfactory. An often unrecognized distinction between grouping and ranking components of any species concept is necessary. (...) A phylogenetic species concept is advocated that uses a grouping criterion of monophyly in a cladistic sense, and a ranking criterion based on those causal processes that are most important in producing and maintaining lineages in a particular case. Such causal processes can include actual interbreeding, selective constraints, and developmental canalization. The widespread use of the biological species concept is flawed for two reasons: because of a failure to distinguish grouping from ranking criteria and because of an unwarranted emphasis on the importance of interbreeding as a universal causal factor controlling evolutionary diversification. The potential to interbreed is not in itself a process; it is instead a result of a diversity of processes which result in shared selective environments and common developmental programs. These types of processes act in both sexual and asexual organisms, thus the phylogenetic species concept can reflect an underlying unity that the biological species concept can not. (shrink)

The current widespread belief that taxonomic methods used before Darwin were essentialist is ill-founded. The essentialist method developed by followers of Plato and Aristotle required definitions to state properties that are always present. Polythetic groups do not obey that requirement, whatever may have been the ontological beliefs of the taxonomist recognizing such groups. Two distinct methods of forming higher taxa, by chaining and by examplar, were widely used in the period between Linnaeus and Darwin, and both generated polythetic groups. Philosopher (...) William Whewell congratulated pre-Darwinian taxonomists for not adhering to the rigid ideal of definition used in the mathematical sciences. What he called the method of types is here called the method of exemplars because typology has been equated with essentialism, whereas the use of a type species as the reference point or prototype for a higher category was a practice inconsistent with essentialism. The story that the essentialism of philosophers dominated the development of systematics may prove to be a myth. (shrink)

Available for the first time in English, Roger's masterwork of intellectual history situates the life sciences within the larger context of French Enlightenment thought and the history of institutions.

At the centre of nineteenth-century imperial authority sat the British Museum, which set the standard for discourse about natural history. This paper examines the meaning of those standards, exploring their important but little-understood role in ending the nineteenth-century species debate. The post-Reform Bill political assault on the authority of the British Museum is examined in the light of the ‘species problem’, and a surprising solution by John Edward Gray, keeper of the natural history collection, is seen as both a mediation (...) and a closure of disputes over the meaning of species and the competence of naturalists. Gray's strategic solution – revealed in his copious notes on the parliamentary commissions investigating the affairs of the BM – embodied competence in institutional discourse and set the stage for the supposed ‘cynical’ definition of species later adopted in Darwin's Origin of Species, namely that species are merely what competent naturalists say they are. (shrink)

George Bentham was not only a great natural historian, he was, initially, a philosopher and logician of enormous promise. His first published work, the oft-forgotten Outline of a new system of logic (1827) has been heralded by some as the opening salvo in the overthrow of the Aristotelian syllogism's grip on logical inference. The move was a defiant political gesture. The young Bentham composed Outline in close concert with his famous uncle, the great utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, expanding and evolving Jeremy's (...) attempts at a new logical system. Bentham meant Outline to be a contribution to the development of the whole utilitarian project. Yet, after 1827, Bentham was never again to write explicitly on logic and philosophy. His heart seemed to lie in natural history, his first love. However, Bentham never really abandoned the utilitarian picture of logic and philosophy. Recent discoveries in the Bentham papers reveal the strong connection between the Benthamite attack on received philosophical categories and George's role in the development of modern institutional natural history. Bentham the logician can be discovered in Bentham the reformist naturalist. This paper examines Bentham's role in the development of the “new” logic and attempts to explore the notions of a reformed naturalism in his later works. This offers an explanation for Bentham's cautious response to the second great revolution of the nineteenth century: the Darwinian revolution. (shrink)