Philosophy did this to us...

1. And in the essential vesture of creation
Does tire the ingener.
[Othe"o II, 1]
The philosophical origins of
biological essentialism
—John Wilkins—

2. The Politics of Essentialism

3. • Can mean
The Politics of Essentialism

4. • Can mean
• Outmoded metaphysics
The Politics of Essentialism

5. • Can mean
• Outmoded metaphysics
• Antiscientific views
The Politics of Essentialism

6. • Can mean
• Outmoded metaphysics
• Antiscientific views
• Anti-women bias
The Politics of Essentialism

7. • Can mean
• Outmoded metaphysics
• Antiscientific views
• Anti-women bias
• Racism
The Politics of Essentialism

8. • Can mean
• Outmoded metaphysics
• Antiscientific views
• Anti-women bias
• Racism
• Nationalism
The Politics of Essentialism

9. • Can mean
• Outmoded metaphysics
• Antiscientific views
• Anti-women bias
• Racism
• Nationalism
• Anti-LGBT bias
The Politics of Essentialism

10. • Can mean
• Outmoded metaphysics
• Antiscientific views
• Anti-women bias
• Racism
• Nationalism
• Anti-LGBT bias
• Political reactionary views
The Politics of Essentialism

11. • Can mean
• Outmoded metaphysics
• Antiscientific views
• Anti-women bias
• Racism
• Nationalism
• Anti-LGBT bias
• Political reactionary views
The Politics of Essentialism
} Scientific politics

12. • Can mean
• Outmoded metaphysics
• Antiscientific views
• Anti-women bias
• Racism
• Nationalism
• Anti-LGBT bias
• Political reactionary views
The Politics of Essentialism
}Identity politics
} Scientific politics

13. Scientific essentialism

14. • That natural kinds must have unique necessary properties
Scientific essentialism

15. • That natural kinds must have unique necessary properties
Scientific essentialism

16. • That natural kinds must have unique necessary properties
• This is a modal essentialism (there are other kinds, as we
shall see)
Scientific essentialism

17. • That natural kinds must have unique necessary properties
• This is a modal essentialism (there are other kinds, as we
shall see)
Scientific essentialism

18. • That natural kinds must have unique necessary properties
• This is a modal essentialism (there are other kinds, as we
shall see)
• Employed in various disciplines
Scientific essentialism

19. • That natural kinds must have unique necessary properties
• This is a modal essentialism (there are other kinds, as we
shall see)
• Employed in various disciplines
• Biology (especially WRT genes, species and taxonomy)
Scientific essentialism

20. • That natural kinds must have unique necessary properties
• This is a modal essentialism (there are other kinds, as we
shall see)
• Employed in various disciplines
• Biology (especially WRT genes, species and taxonomy)
• Psychology (Gelman, etc., on childhood cognitive
dispositions)
Scientific essentialism

21. • That natural kinds must have unique necessary properties
• This is a modal essentialism (there are other kinds, as we
shall see)
• Employed in various disciplines
• Biology (especially WRT genes, species and taxonomy)
• Psychology (Gelman, etc., on childhood cognitive
dispositions)
• Medicine, Physics, Mineralogy, Geology, Soil science,
etc ...
Scientific essentialism

22. Biological (taxic) essentialism

23. Biological (taxic) essentialism
• The view that

24. Biological (taxic) essentialism
• The view that
• Pre-evolutionary and anti-evolutionary
scientists

25. Biological (taxic) essentialism
• The view that
• Pre-evolutionary and anti-evolutionary
scientists
• … hold to an essentialistic metaphysics that
prohibited change between kinds

26. Biological (taxic) essentialism
• The view that
• Pre-evolutionary and anti-evolutionary
scientists
• … hold to an essentialistic metaphysics that
prohibited change between kinds
• and that kinds have necessary properties (e.g.,
genetic, behavioural or morphological)

27. Biological (taxic) essentialism
• The view that
• Pre-evolutionary and anti-evolutionary
scientists
• … hold to an essentialistic metaphysics that
prohibited change between kinds
• and that kinds have necessary properties (e.g.,
genetic, behavioural or morphological)
• This view is sometimes still asserted (e.g.,
Alexander Bird): “the first X was born of a pre-X”

28. Aristotelian essentialism

29. • From the late 1950s, Plato and, later, Aristotle
were accused of bequeathing essentialist
metaphysics to biology
Aristotelian essentialism

30. • From the late 1950s, Plato and, later, Aristotle
were accused of bequeathing essentialist
metaphysics to biology
• Part of the tradition of seeking the metaphysical
foundations of science begun in the 1930s (e.g.,
E.A. Burtt)
Aristotelian essentialism

31. • From the late 1950s, Plato and, later, Aristotle
were accused of bequeathing essentialist
metaphysics to biology
• Part of the tradition of seeking the metaphysical
foundations of science begun in the 1930s (e.g.,
E.A. Burtt)
• Metaphysical determinism of scientific theories is
now widely accepted
Aristotelian essentialism

32. Essentialism Story

33. Essentialism Story
• Gave rise to the Essentialism Story of Ernst Mayr,
David Hull and Elliot Sober

34. Essentialism Story
• Gave rise to the Essentialism Story of Ernst Mayr,
David Hull and Elliot Sober
• Before Darwin, biologists (naturalists) were
constrained by essentialist thinking

35. Essentialism Story
• Gave rise to the Essentialism Story of Ernst Mayr,
David Hull and Elliot Sober
• Before Darwin, biologists (naturalists) were
constrained by essentialist thinking
• Every member of a kind was held to have
essential characters

36. Essentialism Story
• Gave rise to the Essentialism Story of Ernst Mayr,
David Hull and Elliot Sober
• Before Darwin, biologists (naturalists) were
constrained by essentialist thinking
• Every member of a kind was held to have
essential characters
• Change between kinds must therefore either
not occur or be saltative (i.e., non-Darwinian)

37. Darwinian nominalism

38. Darwinian nominalism
• Acc. to the Essentialism Story, Darwin adopted a
nominalism about kinds

39. Darwinian nominalism
• Acc. to the Essentialism Story, Darwin adopted a
nominalism about kinds
• Every member of a kind (e.g., a species) was a
unique particular

40. Darwinian nominalism
• Acc. to the Essentialism Story, Darwin adopted a
nominalism about kinds
• Every member of a kind (e.g., a species) was a
unique particular
• No species had unique necessary properties
true of all members

41. Darwinian nominalism
• Acc. to the Essentialism Story, Darwin adopted a
nominalism about kinds
• Every member of a kind (e.g., a species) was a
unique particular
• No species had unique necessary properties
true of all members
• Population thinking (Mayr)

42. Darwinian nominalism
• Acc. to the Essentialism Story, Darwin adopted a
nominalism about kinds
• Every member of a kind (e.g., a species) was a
unique particular
• No species had unique necessary properties
true of all members
• Population thinking (Mayr)
• Species are individuals (particulars) – Ghiselin,
Hull

43. The nonexistence of
essentialism

44. • In fact, no evidence of essentialism of taxa in biology
is to be found
The nonexistence of
essentialism

45. • In fact, no evidence of essentialism of taxa in biology
is to be found
• Essence plays little or no role even as early as the 17th
century (e.g., Grew)
The nonexistence of
essentialism

46. • In fact, no evidence of essentialism of taxa in biology
is to be found
• Essence plays little or no role even as early as the 17th
century (e.g., Grew)
• Essence of parts, organisms simply meant the
typical form (Grew through to Goethe)
The nonexistence of
essentialism

47. • In fact, no evidence of essentialism of taxa in biology
is to be found
• Essence plays little or no role even as early as the 17th
century (e.g., Grew)
• Essence of parts, organisms simply meant the
typical form (Grew through to Goethe)
• Alarm first sounded by Paul Farber in the 1970s and
Scott Atran in the 1980s
The nonexistence of
essentialism

48. • In fact, no evidence of essentialism of taxa in biology
is to be found
• Essence plays little or no role even as early as the 17th
century (e.g., Grew)
• Essence of parts, organisms simply meant the
typical form (Grew through to Goethe)
• Alarm first sounded by Paul Farber in the 1970s and
Scott Atran in the 1980s
• Ron Amundsen and Polly Windsor have attacked it
more recently, along with Richard Richards and I
The nonexistence of
essentialism

49. • In fact, no evidence of essentialism of taxa in biology
is to be found
• Essence plays little or no role even as early as the 17th
century (e.g., Grew)
• Essence of parts, organisms simply meant the
typical form (Grew through to Goethe)
• Alarm first sounded by Paul Farber in the 1970s and
Scott Atran in the 1980s
• Ron Amundsen and Polly Windsor have attacked it
more recently, along with Richard Richards and I
• Objections to Darwin were always, from the start,
about teleology and selection, not essentialism [Sachs]
The nonexistence of
essentialism

50. Why did the Essentialism
Story arise?

51. In 1910, Dewey, just after the semicentenary celebration
of the Origin, wrote of the Greeks’ core idea of form:
Why did the Essentialism
Story arise?

52. In 1910, Dewey, just after the semicentenary celebration
of the Origin, wrote of the Greeks’ core idea of form:
“This formal activity which operates throughout a
series of changes and holds them to a single course;
which subordinates their aimless flux to its own
perfect manifestation; which, leaping the
boundaries of space and time, keeps individuals
distant in space and remote in time to a uniform
type of structure and function: this principle
seemed to give insight into the very nature of
reality itself. To it Aristotle gave the name, εῖδος.
This term the scholastics translated as species. …
Why did the Essentialism
Story arise?

53. Dewey: Influence of Darwin

54. “The conception of εῖδος, species, a fixed form and
final cause, was the central principle of knowledge
as well as of nature. Upon it rested the logic of
science. Change as change is mere flux and lapse; it
insults intelligence. Genuinely to know is to grasp a
permanent end that realizes itself through changes,
holding them thereby with in the metes and bounds
of fixed truth.
Dewey: Influence of Darwin

55. The rise of the Essentialism
Story

56. The rise of the Essentialism
Story
• The centenary of the Origin was of course 1959

57. The rise of the Essentialism
Story
• The centenary of the Origin was of course 1959
• Writers had to find ways to mark out Darwin’s originality

58. The rise of the Essentialism
Story
• The centenary of the Origin was of course 1959
• Writers had to find ways to mark out Darwin’s originality
• In 1957, Ernst Mayr referred to “typological thinking” and
sheeted it to Aristotle:

59. The rise of the Essentialism
Story
• The centenary of the Origin was of course 1959
• Writers had to find ways to mark out Darwin’s originality
• In 1957, Ernst Mayr referred to “typological thinking” and
sheeted it to Aristotle:
“ Typological thinking finds it easy to reconcile the observed
variability of the individuals of a species with the dogma of
the constancy of species because the variability does not
affect the essence of the eidos [the Greek term translated
as “species”] which is absolute and constant. Since the
eidos is an abstraction derived from human sense
impressions, and a product of the human mind, according
to this school, its members feel justified in regarding a
species “a figment of the imagination,” an idea.

60. The rise of the Essentialism
Story
• The centenary of the Origin was of course 1959
• Writers had to find ways to mark out Darwin’s originality
• In 1957, Ernst Mayr referred to “typological thinking” and
sheeted it to Aristotle:
“ Typological thinking finds it easy to reconcile the observed
variability of the individuals of a species with the dogma of
the constancy of species because the variability does not
affect the essence of the eidos [the Greek term translated
as “species”] which is absolute and constant. Since the
eidos is an abstraction derived from human sense
impressions, and a product of the human mind, according
to this school, its members feel justified in regarding a
species “a figment of the imagination,” an idea.
• Arthur J. Cain, a student of Mayr’s, repeated and elaborated
the claim the next year

61. The hardening of the
Essentialism Story

62. • In 1963, a graduate student at the University of Indiana’s HPS
program did a seminar with Popper
The hardening of the
Essentialism Story

63. • In 1963, a graduate student at the University of Indiana’s HPS
program did a seminar with Popper
• Popper took David Hull’s essay and sent it to BJPS: “The
effect of essentialism on taxonomy: Two thousand years of
stasis”
The hardening of the
Essentialism Story

64. • In 1963, a graduate student at the University of Indiana’s HPS
program did a seminar with Popper
• Popper took David Hull’s essay and sent it to BJPS: “The
effect of essentialism on taxonomy: Two thousand years of
stasis”
• This cemented the Essentialism Story in popular,
philosophical and scientific thought (around 400 citations
I can find so far)
The hardening of the
Essentialism Story

65. • In 1963, a graduate student at the University of Indiana’s HPS
program did a seminar with Popper
• Popper took David Hull’s essay and sent it to BJPS: “The
effect of essentialism on taxonomy: Two thousand years of
stasis”
• This cemented the Essentialism Story in popular,
philosophical and scientific thought (around 400 citations
I can find so far)
• In 1968, Mayr took the term “typological” and equated it with
Popper’s and Hull’s use of “essentialist”
The hardening of the
Essentialism Story

66. • In 1963, a graduate student at the University of Indiana’s HPS
program did a seminar with Popper
• Popper took David Hull’s essay and sent it to BJPS: “The
effect of essentialism on taxonomy: Two thousand years of
stasis”
• This cemented the Essentialism Story in popular,
philosophical and scientific thought (around 400 citations
I can find so far)
• In 1968, Mayr took the term “typological” and equated it with
Popper’s and Hull’s use of “essentialist”
• So “type” = “essence” = “antievolution”
The hardening of the
Essentialism Story

67. • In 1963, a graduate student at the University of Indiana’s HPS
program did a seminar with Popper
• Popper took David Hull’s essay and sent it to BJPS: “The
effect of essentialism on taxonomy: Two thousand years of
stasis”
• This cemented the Essentialism Story in popular,
philosophical and scientific thought (around 400 citations
I can find so far)
• In 1968, Mayr took the term “typological” and equated it with
Popper’s and Hull’s use of “essentialist”
• So “type” = “essence” = “antievolution”
• Typology was creationist (Mayr called some typologists
creationists even though they were evolutionary
biologists!)
The hardening of the
Essentialism Story

68. Popper

69. Popper
“I use the name methodological essentialism to
characterise the view, held by Plato and many of his
followers, that it is the task of pure knowledge or
science to discover and to describe the true nature
of things, i.e. their hidden reality or essence.
[The Open Society and its Enemies, 1945]

70. Popper
“I use the name methodological essentialism to
characterise the view, held by Plato and many of his
followers, that it is the task of pure knowledge or
science to discover and to describe the true nature
of things, i.e. their hidden reality or essence.
[The Open Society and its Enemies, 1945]
He contrasts it to

71. Popper
“I use the name methodological essentialism to
characterise the view, held by Plato and many of his
followers, that it is the task of pure knowledge or
science to discover and to describe the true nature
of things, i.e. their hidden reality or essence.
[The Open Society and its Enemies, 1945]
He contrasts it to
“methodological nominalism [which] aims at describing
how a thing behaves, and especially, whether there
are any regularities in its behaviour.

72. Quine in “Two Dogmas” and
“Three Grades”

73. Quine in “Two Dogmas” and
“Three Grades”
“ The Aristotelian notion of essence was the forerunner, no doubt,
of the modern notion of intension or meaning. For Aristotle it was
essential in men to be rational, accidental to be two-legged. …
Things had essences, for Aristotle, but only linguistic forms have
meanings. Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced
from the object of reference and wedded to the word. [”Two
Dogmas of Empiricism” 1951)

74. Quine in “Two Dogmas” and
“Three Grades”
“ The Aristotelian notion of essence was the forerunner, no doubt,
of the modern notion of intension or meaning. For Aristotle it was
essential in men to be rational, accidental to be two-legged. …
Things had essences, for Aristotle, but only linguistic forms have
meanings. Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced
from the object of reference and wedded to the word. [”Two
Dogmas of Empiricism” 1951)
“ Aristotelian essentialism … is the doctrine that some of the
attributes of a thing (quite independently of the language in which
the thing is referred to, if at all) may be essential to the thing and
others accidental. E.g., a man, or talking animal, or featherless
biped (for they are all the same things), is essentially rational and
accidentally two-legged and talkative, not merely qua man but qua
itself. {”Three Grades of Modal Involvement” 1953]

75. The rise of “essentialism”

76. The rise of “essentialism”
Educational

77. The rise of “essentialism”
Educational Popper

78. The rise of “essentialism”
Educational Popper Quine

79. The rise of “Aristotelian
essentialism”

80. The rise of “Aristotelian
essentialism”
Quine

81. The rise of “Aristotelian
essentialism”
Quine Hull

82. All variants

83. All variants
Darwin

84. All variants
Darwin
Sachs

85. All variants
Similar patterns emerge in German and French
Darwin
Sachs

86. Science by Definition

87. Science by Definition
• Hull is basing his story on Popper and Scriven (an
essay in 1959 entitled “The Logic of Criteria”)

88. Science by Definition
• Hull is basing his story on Popper and Scriven (an
essay in 1959 entitled “The Logic of Criteria”)
• Attack on Analytic Definition:

89. Science by Definition
• Hull is basing his story on Popper and Scriven (an
essay in 1959 entitled “The Logic of Criteria”)
• Attack on Analytic Definition:
• The assumption that we can define terms in an
essentialistic or analytic fashion, and thereby
know something

90. Science by Definition
• Hull is basing his story on Popper and Scriven (an
essay in 1959 entitled “The Logic of Criteria”)
• Attack on Analytic Definition:
• The assumption that we can define terms in an
essentialistic or analytic fashion, and thereby
know something
• Science-By-Definition (SBD)

91. Science by Definition
• Hull is basing his story on Popper and Scriven (an
essay in 1959 entitled “The Logic of Criteria”)
• Attack on Analytic Definition:
• The assumption that we can define terms in an
essentialistic or analytic fashion, and thereby
know something
• Science-By-Definition (SBD)
• Aristotle did not practice SBD in his natural
history, but observation and experiment

92. Science by Definition
• Hull is basing his story on Popper and Scriven (an
essay in 1959 entitled “The Logic of Criteria”)
• Attack on Analytic Definition:
• The assumption that we can define terms in an
essentialistic or analytic fashion, and thereby
know something
• Science-By-Definition (SBD)
• Aristotle did not practice SBD in his natural
history, but observation and experiment
• When he uses SBD, it is always in a categorical
or logical context (so far as I know)

93. Linnaeus’ Essentialism
Salices: or,An essay towards a general history of sa"ows, wi"ows &
osiers, their uses and best methods of propagating and cultivating
them by Walter Wade, Dublin 1811

94. Linnaeus’ Essentialism
• Character essentialis, or
essential characters,
were diagnostic, not
constitutive and hence
only inadvertently
definitional
Salices: or,An essay towards a general history of sa"ows, wi"ows &
osiers, their uses and best methods of propagating and cultivating
them by Walter Wade, Dublin 1811

95. Linnaeus’ Essentialism
• Character essentialis, or
essential characters,
were diagnostic, not
constitutive and hence
only inadvertently
definitional
• Linnaeus knew they
were simply about
recognition
Salices: or,An essay towards a general history of sa"ows, wi"ows &
osiers, their uses and best methods of propagating and cultivating
them by Walter Wade, Dublin 1811

96. “If the essential characters of all genera had been
discovered, the recognition of plants would turn out to be
very easy, and many would undervalue the natural
characters, to their own loss. But they must understand
that, without regard for the natural character, no one will
turn out to be a sound botanist; for when new genera are
discovered, the botanist will always be in doubt if [he]
neglects the natural character. Anyone who thinks that he
understands botany from the essential character and
disregards the natural one is therefore deceiving and
deceived; for the essential character cannot fail to be
deceptive in quite a number of cases. The natural character
is the foundation of the genera of plants, and no one has
ever made a proper judgement about a genus without its
help; and so it is and always will be the absolute foundation
of the understanding of plants. [Philosophia botanica 1751]

97. Whewell and
the Method of Type

98. Whewell and
the Method of Type
Taxonomic definitions identified a type taxon (usu. a species),
around which classifications were arranged

99. Whewell and
the Method of Type
Taxonomic definitions identified a type taxon (usu. a species),
around which classifications were arranged
The “type species” of a genus was the “most typical” form of
it

100. Whewell and
the Method of Type
Taxonomic definitions identified a type taxon (usu. a species),
around which classifications were arranged
The “type species” of a genus was the “most typical” form of
it
“These lessons are of the highest value with regard to all
employments [sic] of the human mind; for the mode in
which words in common use acquire their meaning,
approaches far more nearly to the Method of Type than to
the method of definition. (Whewell 1840, vol 2, pp. 517–519)

101. Whewell and
the Method of Type
Taxonomic definitions identified a type taxon (usu. a species),
around which classifications were arranged
The “type species” of a genus was the “most typical” form of
it
“These lessons are of the highest value with regard to all
employments [sic] of the human mind; for the mode in
which words in common use acquire their meaning,
approaches far more nearly to the Method of Type than to
the method of definition. (Whewell 1840, vol 2, pp. 517–519)
“So long as a plant, in its most essential parts, is more like a
rose than anything else, it is a rose. (p.520)

102. Kinds of essentialism

103. Kinds of essentialism
“Essence, (essentia, from esse, to be,) “the very being of
anything, whereby it is what it is.” Locke. It is an ancient
scholastic word, which cannot be really defined, and should be
banished from use. (Jevons 1870, p.335)

104. Kinds of essentialism
“Essence, (essentia, from esse, to be,) “the very being of
anything, whereby it is what it is.” Locke. It is an ancient
scholastic word, which cannot be really defined, and should be
banished from use. (Jevons 1870, p.335)
• “Essence” has a number of disparate meanings
• Psychological [folk]
• Human [historical and social]
• Logical [semantic, linguistic]
• Metaphysical [Aristotelian essentialism, universalism,
Platonism]
• Physical [natural kind]
• Biological [taxic]
• And others...

105. Psychological [folk]
• Imputing to
objects an internal
persistent nature
on the basis of
superficial
appearances

106. Psychological [folk]
• Imputing to
objects an internal
persistent nature
on the basis of
superficial
appearances
“Psychological essentialism in children”, Gelman 2004

107. Human [historical and social]
• Imputing to sociocultural
groups a shared persistent
set of properties of each
member of the group.
Examples, gender (Heyes
2000), nations (White
1965), ethnicities (Gil-White
2001), races (Sesardic 2010)
and medicine (Jensen 1984;
Pickering in press).

108. Logical [semantic, linguistic]
• Imputing to terms an
invariant and unique
meaning. Examples: The
Aristotelian/scholastic
tradition, Cicero.
Criticized influentially
by Popper (Open Society,
Vol 1: Plato, chapter 3),
Quine

109. Metaphysical [Aristotelian
essentialism, universalism, Platonism]
• The claim that there
are universals that
are facts about the
world (Aaron 1952;
Quine 1951, 1953b).

110. Physical [natural kind]
• The claim that
scientific laws refer
to objects that have
invariant objects
and properties (Ellis
2001, 2002).

111. Biological [taxic]
• The claim that all
members of taxonomic
objects in biology
(species and higher,
subspecies and lower)
have invariant
properties (Devitt 2008,
2010; Hull 1965a, 1984;
Rieppel 2010; Sober
1980; Walsh 2006;
Wilkins 2010, In press).

112. A taxonomy of essentialism
Constitutive Diagnostic Definitional
Physical X X X
Biological X X ?
Psychological X X ?
Human X X ?
Logical — X X
Metaphysical X — X

113. Two modern essentialisms,
and a replacement concept

114. Two modern essentialisms,
and a replacement concept
• Two approaches in favour of essentialism in
biology have been proposed:

115. Two modern essentialisms,
and a replacement concept
• Two approaches in favour of essentialism in
biology have been proposed:
• Paul Griffiths’ “historical essentialism”, or
shared ancestral essence (basically, monophyly)

116. Two modern essentialisms,
and a replacement concept
• Two approaches in favour of essentialism in
biology have been proposed:
• Paul Griffiths’ “historical essentialism”, or
shared ancestral essence (basically, monophyly)
• Michael Devitt’s “intrinsic biological
essentialism” (basically, developmental
essentialism)

117. Two modern essentialisms,
and a replacement concept
• Two approaches in favour of essentialism in
biology have been proposed:
• Paul Griffiths’ “historical essentialism”, or
shared ancestral essence (basically, monophyly)
• Michael Devitt’s “intrinsic biological
essentialism” (basically, developmental
essentialism)
• Dick Boyd’s HPC (homeostatic property cluster)
essentialism: basically a taxon is whatever is
caused by shared homeostatic mechanisms to
persist

118. Is essentialism malignant?

119. Is essentialism malignant?
• In Aristotle’s sense, no: there really is a “what-it-was-to-be”
some kind, or else we would not even perceive it as a kind
(observer bias)

120. Is essentialism malignant?
• In Aristotle’s sense, no: there really is a “what-it-was-to-be”
some kind, or else we would not even perceive it as a kind
(observer bias)
• In Devitt’s sense, no, because developmental systems
really do cause progeny to resemble parents in relevant
ways, although the modal claim of necessity is false; all he
needs is a type kind

121. Is essentialism malignant?
• In Aristotle’s sense, no: there really is a “what-it-was-to-be”
some kind, or else we would not even perceive it as a kind
(observer bias)
• In Devitt’s sense, no, because developmental systems
really do cause progeny to resemble parents in relevant
ways, although the modal claim of necessity is false; all he
needs is a type kind
• In Griffiths’ sense, no, because groups are either
monophyletic or not (and if not, they are not natural
groups)

122. Is essentialism malignant?
• In Aristotle’s sense, no: there really is a “what-it-was-to-be”
some kind, or else we would not even perceive it as a kind
(observer bias)
• In Devitt’s sense, no, because developmental systems
really do cause progeny to resemble parents in relevant
ways, although the modal claim of necessity is false; all he
needs is a type kind
• In Griffiths’ sense, no, because groups are either
monophyletic or not (and if not, they are not natural
groups)
• In Boyd’s HPC kind, no, because if a group actually is
maintained homeostatically, then that permits variation
(again, an observer bias)

123. Essentialisms outside
taxonomy

124. Essentialisms outside
taxonomy
• Genetic essentialisms are malignant, but they are
independent from biological science (they go back
at least to medieval times, and are a side effect of
animal husbandry and agriculture)

125. Essentialisms outside
taxonomy
• Genetic essentialisms are malignant, but they are
independent from biological science (they go back
at least to medieval times, and are a side effect of
animal husbandry and agriculture)
• What the elite experts say is very different to
what popular texts and nonexpert scientists might
say. I do not deny that essentialism has played a
part in their arguments and ideas

126. Conclusions

127. Conclusions
• There never was a biological, taxic, essentialism before
or after Darwin until very recently

128. Conclusions
• There never was a biological, taxic, essentialism before
or after Darwin until very recently
• Two exceptions (all historical generalisations are
false, including this one): Agassiz’ Platonism and De
Vries’s “elementary species”

129. Conclusions
• There never was a biological, taxic, essentialism before
or after Darwin until very recently
• Two exceptions (all historical generalisations are
false, including this one): Agassiz’ Platonism and De
Vries’s “elementary species”
• The claim that Aristotelian essentialism is a form of
scientific essentialism arises after Quine’s paper, based
on Popper’s terminology

130. Conclusions
• There never was a biological, taxic, essentialism before
or after Darwin until very recently
• Two exceptions (all historical generalisations are
false, including this one): Agassiz’ Platonism and De
Vries’s “elementary species”
• The claim that Aristotelian essentialism is a form of
scientific essentialism arises after Quine’s paper, based
on Popper’s terminology
• Essentialism in a plausible form is not malignant or
antievolutionary

131. Conclusions
• There never was a biological, taxic, essentialism before
or after Darwin until very recently
• Two exceptions (all historical generalisations are
false, including this one): Agassiz’ Platonism and De
Vries’s “elementary species”
• The claim that Aristotelian essentialism is a form of
scientific essentialism arises after Quine’s paper, based
on Popper’s terminology
• Essentialism in a plausible form is not malignant or
antievolutionary
• Scientists and philosophers use history as a weapon