The DOI matches its Crossref record; 59 of the 59 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Resurrecting Biological Essentialism
Abstract
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.
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Cites
Kripke, S. A. (1972) · Semantics of Natural Language · doi:10.1007/978-94-010-2557-7_9 · Cited by 7,028
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On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
Livezey, R. L., & Darwin, C. (1953) · American Midland Naturalist · doi:10.2307/2485224 · Cited by 5,405
Hennig, W. (1965) · Annual Review of Entomology · doi:10.1146/annurev.en.10.010165.000525 · Cited by 4,026
Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers
(1975) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511625251 · Cited by 3,918
The Open Society and Its Enemies
Popper, K. (2012) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9780203439913 · Cited by 3,505
Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism
Eldredge, N., Gould, S. J., & Schöpf, T. J. M. (1972) · Cited by 3,257
The principles of classification and a classification of mammals
Simpson, G. G. (1945) · Zenodo · doi:10.5281/zenodo.18028696 · Cited by 2,529
Maienschein, J. (1994) · Nature · doi:10.1038/369716c0 · Cited by 2,247
Cartwright, N. (1983) · doi:10.1093/0198247044.001.0001 · Cited by 2,082
Cited by
From cognition’s location to the epistemology of its nature
Barker, M. J. (2010) · Cognitive Systems Research · doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2010.05.001 · Cited by 13
Metadata
- Authors
- Devitt, M.
- Venue
- Philosophy of Science
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2008-07
- Volume
- 75
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 344-382
- ISSN
- 0031-8248 (ISSN-L)
- 1539-767X
- OpenAlex
- W2043976927
- Cited by
- 406
- References
- 59
- FWCI
- 99.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
