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Have Species Become Déclassé?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Arthur L. Caplan
Arthur L. Caplan*
Affiliation:
The Hastings Center and Columbia University
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Extract

There is no more popular pastime in the literature of the philosophy of biology than analyzing the concept of species. This is partly due to the fact that the concept is such a prominent one in presentations of evolutionary theory. It is also a result of the fact that philosophers and biologists have struggled without a great deal of success to formulate a definition of species that would be acceptable for all the diverse purposes of the biological sciences.

For some time, philosophers of biology assumed that, whatever problems of definition and explication exist regarding the concept of a species, the ontological status of the concept was certain. Species have long been viewed as classes. Indeed, they have been viewed as paradigmatic examples of classes of a special variety. Since the traits of organisms vary from creature to creature as well as from generation to generation, a special set of properties must be used to group or aggregate organisms into species.

Type
Part III. Species and Evolution
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1980 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1980 , 1980 , pp. 70 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Walter Bock, David Hull, Janet Caplan, and Carola Mone for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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