Essentialism, history, and biological taxa
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C 43 (1):182-190 (2012)
| Abstract | de Queiroz (1995), Griffiths (1999) and LaPorte (2004) offer a new version of essentialism called "historical essentialism". According to this version of essentialism, relations of common ancestry are essential features of biological taxa. The main type of argument for this essentialism proposed by Griffiths (1999) and LaPorte (2004) is that the dominant school of classification, cladism, defines biological taxa in terms of common ancestry. The goal of this paper is to show that this argument for historical essentialism is unsatisfactory: cladism does not assume that relations of common ancestry are essential attributes of biological taxa. Therefore, historical essentialism is not justified by cladism. | |||||||||
| Keywords | historical essentialism cladism biological taxa natural kinds | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
  |
| External links |
|
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesMarc Ereshefsky (2010). What's Wrong with the New Biological Essentialism. Philosophy of Science 77 (5):674-685.
H. Clark Barrett (2001). On the Functional Origins of Essentialism. [Journal (Paginated)] (in Press) 2 (1):1-30.
John S. Wilkins (forthcoming). Biological Essentialism and the Tidal Change of Natural Kinds. Science and Education.
Bence Nanay (2011). Three Ways of Resisting Essentialism About Natural Kinds. In J. K. Campbell & M. H. Slater (eds.), Carving Nature at its Joints. Topics in Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 8. MIT Press.
Robin O. Andreasen (2000). Race: Biological Reality or Social Construct? Philosophy of Science 67 (3):666.
Travis Dumsday (2012). A New Argument For Intrinsic Biological Essentialism. Philosophical Quarterly 62 (248):486-504.
Joseph LaPorte (1997). Essential Membership. Philosophy of Science 64 (1):96-112.
Michael Devitt (2008). Resurrecting Biological Essentialism. Philosophy of Science 75 (3):344-382.
Mohan Matthen (forthcoming). Millikan's Historical Kinds. In Justine Kingsbury, Dan Ryder & Kenneth Williford (eds.), Ruth Millikan and her Critics.
Evan Fales (1982). Natural Kinds and Freaks of Nature. Philosophy of Science 49 (1):67-90.
Robert A. Wilson, Matthew J. Barker & Ingo Brigandt (2007). When Traditional Essentialism Fails. Philosophical Topics 35 (1-2):189-215.
Marc Ereshefsky & Mohan Matthen (2005). Taxonomy, Polymorphism, and History: An Introduction to Population Structure Theory. Philosophy of Science 72 (1):1-21.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2011-11-06Total downloads21 ( #58,716 of 549,065 )Recent downloads (6 months)2 ( #37,252 of 549,065 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
