2 - The transformation of Aristotle

Summary

THE ESSENTIALISM STORY

Modern species concepts are typically taken to have their origins in the essentialist frameworks developed by Plato and Aristotle that conceived species as having unchanging, eternal essences based on the possession of essential properties. This essentialist conception of species is usually assumed to have persisted long after Plato and Aristotle in the views of pre-Darwinian naturalists, Linnaeus in particular, until overthrown in the Darwinian revolution. This standard history, described by the historian of science Mary Winsor as “the essentialism story,” is also the essentialism orthodoxy, given its widespread acceptance by philosophers and biologists. But at best it is misleading. It misrepresents Aristotle, Linnaeus and many, if not all, of the pre-Darwinian naturalists as being committed to an essentialism that groups organisms into species on the basis of essential properties or traits, and that implies species fixity, atemporality and discreteness. It also leads us to believe that Darwin's challenge was to a property essentialism. In this chapter, we will see where the Essentialism Story seems to go wrong with respect to the views of Aristotle and why. In the next chapter we shall examine the views of the pre-Darwinian naturalists, in particular Linnaeus, Buffon and Cuvier, and see how the Essentialism Story is misleading there as well. As we shall see, Darwin was not confronted with anything like the assumed essentialism consensus. But it is not just the history that suffers here. The Essentialism Story has led to a general misunderstanding of the species problem in general.