Abstract

There are tigers, volcanos, and television sets, among other things. And there also the species to which they belong: the species tiger, the species volcano, and the species television set. ;Two families of question arise. First, what makes a particular object belong to the species to which it in fact belongs? What is it, for example, about some animal a tiger, rather than a leopard, or a television set? Second, since species are apparently not concrete objects, we wonder: what sort of thing is a species? and: what does it take for one to exist? ;What follows begins with an investigation of the first question. The prevailing view has always been that whether something belongs to one species rather than another depends on what the thing is like, either on the outside or the inside. Thus if two objects are structurally alike then they belong to the same species. In Part I I try to show that this view is radically mistaken. The way something comes into the world, I argue, has more to do with what species it belongs to than does anything about its structure. ;In Part II I take up the question of what species are. About this the prevailing view has always been that species arise in some way out of the combination of properties. For example, the properties of being striped, carnivorous, four-legged, etc., somehow add up to the species tiger. Or, a modern variant, perhaps it is such properties as having a certain genetic structure that do the trick. I argue that species ought to be regarded as ordinary individuals, who rather than being composed out of properties are brought into the world by the actions of concrete things, gametes for example. I argue that species owe their existence to their first members; the first tigers brought with them into existence their species. ;And I connect the two parts: if Part II is correct, then that makes sense of some of the principal theses of Part I, and provides independent support for them: Part I in a sense follows from Part II