Works by Mary P. Winsor

78

The Creation of the Essentialism Story: An Exercise in Metahistory.Mary P. Winsor - 2006 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28 (2):149 - 174.

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; (...)

Anti-Essentialism in Metaphysics

Essentialism about Species in Philosophy of Biology

History of Biology in Philosophy of Biology

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45 citations

94

Non-Essentialist Methods in Pre-Darwinian Taxonomy.Mary P. Winsor - 2003 - Biology and Philosophy 18 (3):387-400.

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 (...)

Anti-Essentialism in Metaphysics

Essentialism about Species in Philosophy of Biology

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43 citations

29

Linaeus' Biology Was Not Essentialist.Mary P. Winsor - 2006 - Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 93 (1):2-7.

The current picture of the history of taxonomy incorporates A. J. Cain's claim that Linnaeus strove to apply the logical method of definition taught by medieval followers of Aristotle. Cain's argument does not stand up to critical examination. Contrary to some published statements, there is no evidence that Linnaeus ever studied logic. His use of the words “genus” and “species” ruined the meaning they had in logic, and “essential” meant to him merely “taxonomically useful.” The essentialism story, a narrative that (...)

Anti-Essentialism in Metaphysics

Essentialism about Species in Philosophy of Biology

History of Biology in Philosophy of Biology

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14 citations

72

The English Debate on Taxonomy and Phylogeny, 1937-1940.Mary Pickard Winsor - 1995 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 17 (2):227 - 252.

Between 1937 and 1940 the Taxonomic Principles Committee of the newly-founded Association for the Study of Systematics in Relation to General Biology (later the Systematics Association) attempted to define the relationship between evolution and taxonomy. The people who took part in the discussion were W.T. Calman, C.R.P. Diver, J.S.L. Gilmour, J.S. Huxley, W.D. Lang, J.R. Norman, R. Melville, O.W. Richards, M.A. Smith, T.A. Sprague, H. Hamshaw Thomas, W.B. Turrill, B.P. Uvarov, A.F. Watkins, E.I. White, and A.J. Wilmott. Most of the (...)

History of Biology in Philosophy of Biology

Systematic Biology in Philosophy of Biology

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10 citations

49

The Practitioner of Science: Everyone Her Own Historian. [REVIEW]Mary P. Winsor - 2001 - Journal of the History of Biology 34 (2):229-245.

Carl Becker's classic 1931 address "Everyman his own historian" holds lessons for historians of science today. Like the professional historians he spoke to, we are content to display the Ivory- Tower Syndrome, writing scholarly treatises only for one another, disdaining both the general reader and our natural readership, scientists. Following his rhetoric, I argue that scientists are well aware of their own historicity, and would be interested in lively and balanced histories of science. It is ironic that the very professionalism (...)

History of Biology in Philosophy of Biology

History of Science, Misc in General Philosophy of Science

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9 citations

45

Cain on Linnaeus: The Scientist-Historian as Unanalysed Entity.Mary P. Winsor - 2001 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 32 (2):239-254.

Zoologist A. J. Cain began historical research on Linnaeus in 1956 in connection with his dissatisfaction over the standard taxonomic hierarchy and the rules of binomial nomenclature. His famous 1958 paper ‘Logic and Memory in Linnaeus's System of Taxonomy’ argues that Linnaeus was following Aristotle's method of logical division without appreciating that it properly applies only to ‘analysed entities’ such as geometric figures whose essential nature is already fully known. The essence of living things being unanalysed, there is no basis (...)

History of Biology in Philosophy of Biology

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9 citations

13

Cain on Linnaeus: The Scientist-Historian as Unanalysed Entity.Mary P. Winsor - 2001 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 32 (2):239-254.

History of Biology in Philosophy of Biology

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9 citations

44

Species, Demes, and the Omega Taxonomy: Gilmour and the Newsystematics. [REVIEW]Mary Pickard Winsor - 2000 - Biology and Philosophy 15 (3):349-388.

The word ``deme'' was coined by the botanists J.S.L. Gilmour and J.W.Gregor in 1939, following the pattern of J.S. Huxley's ``cline''. Its purposewas not only to rationalize the plethora of terms describing chromosomaland genetic variation, but also to reduce hostility between traditionaltaxonomists and researchers on evolution, who sometimes scorned eachother's understanding of species. A multi-layered system of compoundterms based on deme was published by Gilmour and J. Heslop-Harrison in1954 but not widely used. Deme was adopted with a modified meaning byzoologists (...)

Populations in Philosophy of Biology

Species in Philosophy of Biology

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8 citations

10

Eloge: Ernst Mayr, 1904–2005.Mary P. Winsor - 2005 - Isis 96 (3):415-418.

History of Biology in Philosophy of Biology

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2 citations

13

J. B. S. Haldane's Darwinism In Its Religious Context.Gordon McOuat & Mary P. Winsor - 1995 - British Journal for the History of Science 28 (2):227-231.

Early in this century, only a few biologists accepted that natural selection was the chief cause of evolution, until the independent calculations of John Burdon Sanderson Haldane , Sewall Wright and R. A. Fisher demonstrated that ideal populations subject to Mendel's laws could behave as Darwin had said they would. Evolutionary theorist John Maynard Smith, a student of Haldane's, has raised the question of why Haldane, who was no naturalist, took up the subject of evolution, and he suggests that the (...)

History of Biology in Philosophy of Biology

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1 citation

31

The J. H. B. Bookshelf.Ronald Rainger, Joy Harvey, Mary P. Winsor, Joe Cain & Keith R. Benson - 1997 - Journal of the History of Biology 30 (2):303-315.

Philosophy of Biology, Misc in Philosophy of Biology

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10

Andrew Hamilton . The Evolution of Phylogenetic Systematics. Viii + 311 Pp., Illus., Bibls., Index. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. $65. [REVIEW]Mary P. Winsor - 2015 - Isis 106 (4):982-983.

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6

Anna Marie Roos. Web of Nature: Martin Lister , the First Arachnologist. Xx + 478 Pp., Illus., Bibl., Index. Leiden/Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2011. $177. [REVIEW]Mary Pickard Winsor - 2014 - Isis 105 (2):442-443.

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5

“I would sooner die than give up”: Huxley and Darwin's deep disagreement.Mary P. Winsor - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (2):1-36.

Thomas Henry Huxley and Charles Darwin discovered in 1857 that they had a fundamental disagreement about biological classification. Darwin believed that the natural system should express genealogy while Huxley insisted that classification must stand on its own basis, independent of evolution. Darwin used human races as a model for his view. This private and long-forgotten dispute exposes important divisions within Victorian biology. Huxley, trained in physiology and anatomy, was a professional biologist while Darwin was a gentleman naturalist. Huxley agreed with (...)

Philosophy of Biology

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Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum.Mary P. Winsor & Ronald Rainger - 1995 - Journal of the History of Biology 28 (1):151-166.

Philosophy of Biology

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7 citations

Starfish, Jellyfish, and the Order of Life: Issues of Nineteenth-Century Science.Mary P. Winsor - 1978 - Journal of the History of Biology 11 (1):219-220.

History of Biology in Philosophy of Biology

Philosophy of Biology

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13 citations

7

The Spontaneous Generation Controversy From Descartes to OparinJohn Farley.Mary P. Winsor - 1980 - Isis 71 (1):163-164.

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Applied ethics	Epistemology	History of Western Philosophy	Meta-ethics	Metaphysics	Normative ethics
Philosophy of biology	Philosophy of language	Philosophy of mind	Philosophy of religion	Science Logic and Mathematics	More ...