Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T08:10:08.678Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Natural Kinds: Rosy Dawn, Scholastic Twilight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2017

Extract

The rosy dawn of my title refers to that optimistic time when the logical concept of a natural kind originated in Victorian England. The scholastic twilight refers to the present state of affairs. I devote more space to dawn than twilight, because one basic problem was there from the start, and by now those origins have been forgotten. Philosophers have learned many things about classification from the tradition of natural kinds. But now it is in disarray and is unlikely to be put back together again. My argument is less founded on objections to the numerous theories now in circulation, than on the sheer proliferation of incompatible views. There no longer exists what Bertrand Russell called ‘the doctrine of natural kinds’—one doctrine. Instead we have a slew of distinct analyses directed at unrelated projects.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Goodman, N., Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), 10.Google Scholar

2 Dupré, J., The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. ‘In Defence of Classification’ Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 32 (2001), 203—219Google Scholar; reprinted in Humans and Other Animals (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 8199Google Scholar. ‘Is “Natural Kind” a Natural Kind?’, The Monist 85 (2002), 2949Google Scholar, reprinted in ibid., 103–123.

3 L. Menand [book review], The New Yorker, 28th 05 2001, 128.Google Scholar

4 Rorty, R., ‘Is Natural Science a Natural kind?’, in McMullen, E. (ed.), Construction and Constraint: The Shaping of Scientific Rationality (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1988), 4974Google Scholar. Reprinted in Rorty, , Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), 4662.Google Scholar

5 ‘Is “Natural Kind” a Natural Kind?’, op. cit. note 2.

6 Quine, W.V.O., ‘Natural Kinds’, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 114138Google Scholar, on 118. Note that after the first few pages, Quine drops the adjective ‘natural’ and writes of kind and kinds. One could propose this as the truly pragmatist way of speaking, a return to William James, as discussed in the next section.

7 Nur Narr! Nur Dichter! in F. Nietzsche, Dithyrambs of Dionysus, bilingual edition, translated by R. J. Hollingdale from Dionysos-Dithyramben (1891)Google Scholar, (London: Anvil Press, 1981, 22–27). Hollingdale translates bunt as gaudily or gaudy, as in ein Tier, ein listiges, raubendes, schleichendes, / das lügen muβ, / das wissentlich lügen muβ, / nach Beute lüstern, / bunt verlarvt —‘lusting for prey, gaudily masked’. Or Nur buntes redend — Talking only gaudy nonsense. I do not wish to argue with such a masterly translator, but would add that bunt above all is associated with varied bright colours, our bunting on festive sailboats. Joseph's cloak of many colours is bunt. It is the bright variety that I take from Nietzsche's bunt more than the gaudiness.

8 W. James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New York: Longmans Green 1907), 179.

9 Pellegrin, P., Aristotle's Classification of Animals: Biology and the Conceptual Classification of the Aristotelian Corpus, translated from the French of 1982 by Preuss, A. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986)Google Scholar. A subtle exposition of the earlier view, that Aristotle was groping for a taxonomy, is found in Lloyd, G. E. R., ‘The Development of Aristotle's Theory of the Classification of Animals’, Phronesis 6 (1961), 5980.Google Scholar

10 G.-L. L. Buffon, Histoire naturelle générale et particulière, avec la description du cabinet du roi, Vol. IV, Histoire générale des animaux (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1753), 355b.

11 Linnaeus, C., Philosophia Botanica (Stockholm: G. Kiesewetter, 1751), 100.Google Scholar

12 Adanson, M., Histoire naturelle du Sénégal (Paris: C.-J.-B. Bauche, 1763), xv.Google Scholar

13 Daly, C., ‘Natural Kinds’, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy CD-ROM (London: Routledge, Version 1.0.)Google Scholar

14 Stevens, P., The Development of Biological Systematics: Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Nature, and the Natural System (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 1013.Google Scholar

15 Darwin, C., The Origin of Species (London: John Murray 1859), 413, 420.Google Scholar

16 For a popular account of post-tree architecture, see Doolittle, W. F., ‘Uprooting the Tree of Life’, Scientific American, 02 2000, 9095Google Scholar. For the estuary model, and other reasons for not sticking with trees, see Dupré, , Humans and Other AnimalsGoogle Scholar, (op. cit. note 2), p. 86. For the origins of tree diagrams in Western logic and science, see Hacking, Ian, ‘Trees of Logic, Trees of Porphyry’, in Advancements of Learning: Essays in Honour of Paolo Rossi, Heilbron, J. (ed) (Florence: Olschki, 2007), 157206.Google Scholar

17 This insightful phrase comes from Michel Foucault, in the title of Chapter I, Part II of Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'age classique, Paris: Plon, 1961Google Scholar. Finally translated as History of Madness (London: Routledge, 2006).Google Scholar

18 Ampère, A.-M., ‘D'une classification naturelle pour les corps simples’, Annales de Chimie et Physique (n.s.) 1 (1815), 295309, 373395, 2 (1816), 105–116.Google Scholar

19 Kuhn, T. S., ‘Afterwords’, in Horwich, P. (ed.), World Changes: Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1993), 311341Google Scholar. Reprinted in Kuhn, T. S., The Road since Structure, Conant, J. and Haugeland, J. (eds.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 224252.Google Scholar

20 For example, by Thomason, R., ‘Species, Determinates and Natural Kinds’, Nous 3 (1969), 95101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 C. S. Peirce cites Wilson's Rule of Reason (1551) and Blundeville's Arte of Logicke (1599) for stand alone ‘kind’ in logic. ‘Kind’, Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, (New York: Macmillan, 1903), Vol. I, 600Google Scholar. He might have mentioned Locke, who takes ‘kind’ to be English for genus, and ‘sort’ to be English for species; Essay, III.i.6.

22 Whewell, W., The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon Their History (London: Parker, 1847), I, 469Google Scholar. All quoted sentences are found in the first edition of 1840, but I cite the second because it is widely available while the 1840 edition is rare. Book VIII, ch. I, § 5, is headed Kinds, 469Google Scholar. The third and fourth quotations below are from pages 475 and 471 respectively.

23 Medin, D. L., ‘Concepts and Conceptual Structure’, American Psychologist 44 (1989): 14691481, on 1469.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

24 Rosch, E., ‘Natural Categories’, Cognitive Psychology 4 (1973), 328350Google Scholar. See, Whewell, , 494Google Scholar, heading for § 10: ‘Natural Groups given by Type, not by Definition’.

25 Mill, J. S., Autobiography (London: Longman, 1873), 191.Google Scholar

26 Mill, J. S., A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation (London: Longman, 1st edition 1843)Google Scholar. All 8 editions are collated and printed in Vols. VII and VIII of Robson, J. (ed.), Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 28 vols. 19651983)Google Scholar. References will be given as ‘Logic’, followed by Mill's book, chapter and section number, followed by the page number in the Robson edition. Pagination of Vol. VIII continues that of Vol. VII.

27 1838 is the date furnished by Robson, , ‘Textual Introduction’, Logic, lxvGoogle Scholar. It is not altogether clear that Mill used the actual word ‘kind’ before Whewell published.

28 Logic. These two quotations and t h e next are from I. vii. § 4, 122.

29 Logic, 123Google Scholar, with a clause inserted in t he 4 th edition, revised, of 1856.

30 Logic, I. viGoogle Scholar. § 3, 114; I have used the version in the first three editions rather than the slightly rewritten one of 1856 and thereafter. The reference to Locke is from 115.

31 Hempel was working on confirmation on his arrival in the United States in 1941, publishing his first essay in Mind in 1945, followed by an essay specifically on the paradoxes in 1946. It may be relevant that the German translation of the Logic translated ‘crow’ by Rabe, rather than Krähe.

32 ‘When uniformities of coexistence are derivative, their evidence is that of empirical laws.’ Logic III. xxiiGoogle Scholar., heading of §6.

33 Autobiography, 225–6.Google Scholar

34 Logic, III. xxiiGoogle Scholar. §7, 585–6.

35 Venn, J., The Logic of Chance: An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, with Especial Reference to its Application to Moral and Social Science (London: Macmillan, 1866), 244Google Scholar. Note that the Second edition, much revised, of 1876, and the Third edition, revised, of 1888 contain the same discussion of natural kinds, but the arrangement of matter in the successive editions is very different.

36 Venn, J., The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic (London: Macmillan, 1889), 82.Google Scholar

37 Peirce, , op. cit.Google Scholar note 21. Pierce presumably knew Venn on natural kinds for he referred often enough to his Empirical Logic. He does not seem to have reviewed that book, as he did the 1866 Logic of Chance: ‘Here is a book which should be read by every thinking man.’ The North American Review 105 (07 1867), 317321, on 317Google Scholar. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. VIII, 3Google Scholar.

38 Venn, , Empirical Logic, 83.Google Scholar

39 Mill, , LogicGoogle Scholar, footnote to III. xxii. §6 added to the 6th edition of 1865, 585.

40 There is no obvious way to translate ‘natural kind’ into French. Genre naturel and espece naturelle were both used in the 1858 translation of Mill's Logic, once on the same page, but both make incomprehensible Mill's contrast between kinds on the one hand, and species and genus on the other. The translation of Quine used espece naturelle. The translators of Putnam and Kripke followed suit. Cournot wrote about genres naturels, but he did not mean natural kinds. He meant natural as opposed to artificial genera; he believed that the species in use in the biology of his day were natural, and that the question of artificiality arose chiefly for higher ranks, starting with genera. Thus Cournot was addressing what I called the ontological, rather than the descriptive, problem about taxonomy.

41 Cournot, A. A., Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances et sur les caracteres de la critique philosophique (Paris: Hachette, 1851).Google Scholar

42 Ibid. 201. Darwin used exactly the same example to contrast with species explained in genealogical terms, Origin 397Google Scholar. Writing too soon after the Origin had been published, Cournot averred that we never would answer the question of the origin of species, but that we could tell on Laplacian grounds which groups of living things were natural groups. Traité de l'enchaînement des idées fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l'histoire, (Paris: Hachette, 1861).Google Scholar

43 Cournot, , Essai, p. 202, 204Google Scholar. His words were lien de solidarité, a concept that he does not explain very clearly. But it is not idle to associate it with Putnam's concept of a hidden structure underlying a natural kind.

44 Broad, C. D., ‘On the Relation between Induction and Probability’Google Scholar, Reprinted from Mind 27 (1918), 389404Google Scholar; 29 (1920), 11–45, in Induction, Probability, and Causation: Selected Papers by C. D. Broad (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1968), 152, on 44.Google Scholar

45 Russell, B., Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1948), 335, 461–2.Google Scholar

46 Quine, , ‘Natural Kinds’, op. cit. note 6, 126, 138.Google Scholar

47 Putnam, H., ‘Explanation and Reference’, in Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1975), 198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Putnam, H., ‘The Meaning of “Meaning”’Google Scholar, in ibid., 215–271, on 235.

49 Hacking, I., ‘Why Putnam's Theory of Natural Kinds is not the same as Kripke's’Google Scholar, to appear in Principia: Revista Internacional de Epistemologica (Florianopolis, Brazil). ‘Hidden Structure and Natural Kinds’, to appear in the Library of Living Philosophers (‘Schillp’) volume dedicated to Putnam.

50 One of the most vigorous recent critiques is Laporte, J., Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change (Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. It contains thorough references to thirty years of debate. A decade earlier T. E. Wilkerson, offering a modest essentialism, provided ample references in Natural Kinds (Aldershot: Avebury, 1995)Google Scholar, with an update, ‘Recent work: Natural kinds’ Philosophical Books 39 (1998): 225233.Google Scholar

51 The same point was made long ago in Dupré, J., ‘Wilkerson on Natural Kinds’, Philosophy 64 (1989), 248251CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wilkerson modified his account in the light of the criticism.

52 Donnellan, K. S.. ‘Kripke and Putnam on Natural Kind Terms’, in Ginet, C. and Shoemaker, S. (eds.), Knowledge and Mind: Philosophical Essays, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 84104.Google Scholar

53 Ellis, B., Scientific Essentialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 56.Google Scholar

54 Ghiselin, M., ‘On Psychologism in the Logic of Taxonomic Controversies’, Systematic Zoology 15 (1966), 207215Google Scholar. Metaphysics and the Origin of Species (Syracuse, N.Y.: State University of New York, 1997).Google Scholar

55 Kitcher, P., ‘Species’, Philosophy of Science 51 (1984): 308333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Keil, F. C., Semantic and Conceptual Development: An Ontological Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1979)Google Scholar. Concepts, Kinds and Cognitive Development (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1989).Google Scholar

57 Atran, S., Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

58 Atran, S., ‘Folk Biology and the Anthropology of Science: Cognitive Universals and Cultural Particulars,’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1998), 547569CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, with discussion and replies until 609, on 569, note 16.

59 Wilkerson, , op. cit. note 50.Google Scholar

60 Cooper, R., ‘Why Hacking is Wrong about Human Kinds’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (2004), 7385Google Scholar. Her point was to show that I was wrong about what I used to call human kinds. I do not protest her argument, but go further back. There is, if possible, even less of a class of human kinds than there is of natural kinds. See Hacking, Ian, ‘Kinds of People: Moving Targets’Google Scholar, forthcoming in Proceedings of the British Academy.

61 Dupré, , Humans and Other Animals, op. cit. note 2, 97.Google Scholar

62 Boyd, R., ‘What realism implies and what it does not’, Dialectica 43 (1989): 529Google Scholar; ‘Anti-foundationalism and the enthusiasm for natural kinds’, Philosophical Studies 61 (1991): 127148Google Scholar; ‘Homeostasis, species and higher taxa’, in Wilson, R., Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1999), 141186.Google Scholar

63 Wiggins, D., Sameness and Substance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), 1980Google Scholar. Sameness and Substance Renewed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. Milikan, R. B., ‘A Common Structure for Concepts of Individuals, Stuffs, and Real Kinds: More Mama, More Milk, and More Mouse’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1998), 5565Google Scholar, with discussion and replies until p. 100. On Clear and Confused Ideas: An Essay about Substance Concepts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

64 Sankey, H., ‘Induction and Natural Kinds’, Principia: Revista Internacional de Epistemologia 1 (1997), 239254.Google Scholar

65 Indeed it is essentially the first sentence of my paper ‘Entrenchment’, in D. Stalker, (ed.), GRUE! The New Riddle of Induction (Chicago: Open Court), 193223.Google Scholar

66 Cartwright, N., How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 van Fraassen, B., Laws and Symmetry (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), vii.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 For example, by Dupre, , Humans and Other Animals, op. cit. note 2, 108Google Scholar; not even the Hardy-Weinberg law will do the trick.

69 Hacking, Ian, ‘A Tradition of Natural Kinds’, Philosophical Studies 61 (1991), 109126CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My long-postponed book, The Tradition of Natural Kinds (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press), tells more about the dawn, treats the high noon of Kripke and Putnam in respectful detail, and moves on to the present twilight.