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The Nature of Biological Species

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Kent E. Holsinger
Kent E. Holsinger*
Affiliation:
Department of Botany, University of California at Berkeley
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Abstract

Although it is possible to regard a species as a set with a special internal structure, it is preferable to regard a species as an individual precisely to emphasize this internal structure. It is necessary to recognize, moreover, that two organisms that are part of a single entity with respect to one process need not be part of a single entity with respect to another process. Furthermore, choosing to regard two entities (with respect to one process) as conspecific is not to deny that there are two entities within this species. Thus, the systematist need not propose formal names for every entity he discovers, but the names he proposes ought to be as faithful to the relationship among the entities as is possible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 293 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1984

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Footnotes

†

David Hull, Philip Kitcher, Ernst Mayr, Robert Ornduff, J. J. C. Smart, and John H. Thomas provided helpful comments on various earlier versions of this paper, though none of them can be held responsible for the views expressed here. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of a research fellowship from the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, University of California, Berkeley.

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