Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T10:47:21.903Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Carving Nature at the Joints

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Muhammad Ali Khalidi*
Affiliation:
Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper discusses a philosophical issue in taxonomy. At least one philosopher has suggested the taxonomic principle that scientific kinds are disjoint. An opposing position is defended here by marshalling examples of nondisjoint categories which belong to different, coexisting classification schemes. This denial of the disjointness principle can be recast as the claim that scientific classification is “interest-relative”. But why would anyone have held that scientific categories are disjoint in the first place? It is argued that this assumption is needed in one attempt to derive essentialism. This shows why the essentialist and interest-relative approaches to classification are in conflict.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 100 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1993

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.)

Footnotes

†

For very helpful comments on earlier drafts, I am grateful to Liam Murphy and to Nathan Salmon. I have also benefited from discussing some of these issues with Akeel Bilgrami and Isaac Levi.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Box 100 Central Mail Room, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.

References

Boyd, R. (1979), “Metaphor and Theory Change: What Is ‘Metaphor’ a Metaphor For?”, in Ortony, A. (ed.), Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp. 356–408.Google Scholar
Dupré, J. (1981), “Natural Kinds and Biological Taxa”, Philosophical Review 90: 66–90.10.2307/2184373CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hennig, W. (1979), Phylogenetic Systematics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1982), “Genes”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 33: 337–359.10.1093/bjps/33.4.337CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noble, E. R. and Noble, G. A. (1982), Parasitology: The Biology of Animal Parasites, 5th ed. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1969), Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/quin92204CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, N. U. (1981), Reference and Essence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G. (1961), Principles of Animal Taxonomy. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/simp92414CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomason, R. (1969), “Species, Determinates, and Natural Kinds”, Noûs 3: 95–101.10.2307/2216160CrossRefGoogle Scholar